The Small Building That Built a School
By Peter Martey Agbeko
In a corner of Tema New Town, a modest two-storey building holds the memory of every child who ever learned their first letters there, and it now needs Ghana’s help to keep serving the next generation.
There is a particular kind of building that outgrows its blueprint. It stops being brick and mortar and becomes something closer to memory, a place people point to and say, “that is where it began.” In Tema New Town, that building sits quietly beside the St Nicholas Orthodox Church. For generations of St Nicholas pupils, it is exactly that kind of place.
It was not built to be a school. When it went up around 2008, its purpose was simpler: a home for church and Foundation activities and a welcome point for seafarers passing through Tema’s busy port. Over the years, though, it became something more: a gathering place for St Nicholas Day celebrations, visiting athletes and diplomats, members of the Greek community in Ghana, and families of Tema New Town who came to know it simply as part of the neighbourhood.
Then, in 2012, it took on its most important role yet. It became the first classroom block of St Nicholas Preparatory School, the institution now affectionately known to many as “the Greek School in Ghana.” The school grew from the wider vision of the St Nicholas Charity Foundation and the people who built and sustained it, with deep roots in the Greek maritime community’s long relationship with Ghana. The late Captain Alkiviadis Kapas and Deborah Eleazar were among those instrumental in turning that vision into a working school for local children. Small children learned to write their names inside those walls. Some are now young adults, carrying their own memories of the building where their education began.
A history rooted in the sea
The story of the building cannot be told apart from the maritime community or from the St Nicholas Orthodox Church beside it. The wider vision was strongly shaped by Captain Panagiotis N. Tsakos and the Tsakos family’s longstanding relationship with Ghana, reinforced through Captain Tsakos’ service as Honorary Consul of Ghana in Greece. Work on the Orthodox church in Tema New Town began in 2006. It was completed two years later, consecrated in honour of St Nicholas, patron saint of seafarers, a fitting dedication in a port town built on maritime trade.
From the beginning, the Foundation’s development was a collective undertaking. The Tsakos family and associated foundations have supported St Nicholas from its earliest days and continue to do so today. The Efthymiadis family has also been a longstanding benefactor, alongside many donors from Ghana, Greece, the United Kingdom and the international maritime community. Their combined support created not simply buildings but an institution capable of remaining part of children’s lives for many years.
What began as a small nursery and kindergarten has grown into a community school with additional classrooms, a library and an ICT laboratory. Successive phases of development have been made possible by benefactors and organisations including the Tsakos Group and its charitable foundations, the Sailors’ Society of the United Kingdom, Greek and Ghanaian businesses, and major corporate supporters. In 2019, Mytilineos S.A., the parent company of Metka Ghana, funded a three-classroom block, which was completed in under six months. The school follows the Ghana Education Service curriculum, enriched with Greek and French language lessons, music, dance and a cadet corps trained by the Ghana Navy.
More than a classroom
What has always set St Nicholas apart is its treatment of education as inseparable from care. Since opening in 2012, the school has served 276 children, with 65 graduates to date. Pupils receive two meals a day, breakfast and lunch, together with basic healthcare and support through Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme. The Foundation also assists children with serious health conditions whose families cannot cover the costs alone, and its support continues beyond the school gates by assisting graduates progressing to secondary and tertiary education.
One of those graduates is Jessica Amennyedor, who has spoken warmly about the part the school and her sponsors played in helping her pursue her ambition to become a journalist. Hers is one of many stories that illustrate what sustained, holistic support can achieve when a school remains interested in a child’s future long after the first lessons have been learned.
Why the building matters now
But buildings by the sea carry the sea’s cost. Years of exposure to salt air and coastal humidity have worn into the structure in ways that are no longer cosmetic. An independent engineering assessment has confirmed what teachers and parents had already begun to notice: the building needs serious structural repair, including reinforcement of load-bearing walls, damp treatment, restoration of weakened masonry and a full refurbishment of the toilet and washroom block shared by the school and church community.
For now, that has meant two kindergarten classrooms, serving around fifty of the school’s youngest children, standing empty. Not because the children have gone anywhere, but because safety demands it.
“The Original Foundation Building represents the generosity of the maritime community and the belief that education can change lives,” says Deborah Eleazar, Trustee of the St Nicholas Foundation, who has been closely involved with the school throughout its development. “Restoring it is not simply a construction project. It is the continuation of a promise made many years ago.”
The restoration itself is not an extravagant undertaking. The Foundation is seeking approximately GHS 1,000,000, equivalent to around £50,000, €58,000, or US$66,000, to complete the work, a fraction of the roughly £130,000 and near-year-long timeline required to construct a comparable new building. Engineers estimate the restoration can be completed within two to three months once funding is in place. The result will be more than repaired walls: it will allow the school’s youngest children to return to safe classrooms while preserving the place where St Nicholas Preparatory School began.
A community already answering the call
The Foundation is not asking Ghana’s business community to start from nothing. Its story has always been one of shared responsibility. Alongside the longstanding support of the Tsakos and Efthymiadis families and donors from the international maritime world, businesses and organisations have supported the school and its wider work over the years. These have included Atlas Copco, Venma SA, Farmhouse Productions Ghana, KATE Construction, Vodafone (now Telecel) Ghana, AirtelTigo and the Paddies Professional Group, among others. Their involvement reflects a tradition of Ghanaian, Greek and international partners investing in the school and the community it serves.
There is something worth noticing in the arithmetic, too. For the cost of restoring rather than rebuilding, Ghana’s business community has an unusually direct and visible way to make an impact, not a distant or abstract cause, but a specific set of rooms in a specific school, for specific children, with a completion date measured in weeks rather than years. St Nicholas Charity Foundation is a UK registered charity, number 1164193, and its accounts and activities are open to scrutiny by anyone considering a partnership.
The building has already done its work once. It turned a church and Foundation building into the beginning of hundreds of educations. It welcomed seafarers, celebrated St Nicholas Day, hosted visitors and dignitaries and, in its quietest and perhaps most important role, taught small children in Tema New Town to read.
Restoring it now is both an act of preservation and an investment in what comes next. It protects a tangible part of the history created by the Foundation, the Ghanaian community, Greek families, maritime benefactors and corporate supporters, while returning safe classrooms to the children who need them today.
Ghanaian businesses, philanthropists, churches, community groups and individuals who would like to support the restoration can reach the St Nicholas Charity Foundation directly or follow its work on Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube as @StNicholasTema.
To support the restoration:
St Nicholas Charity Foundation, Tema New Town, Ghana
Email: deleazar.stnicholas@gmail.com
Web: www.stnicholasschoolghana.com
Brochure: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/14eea4f4ae.html
Donate: www.justgiving.com/charity/st-nicholas-foundation
