Sometimes, a simple “yes” can change lives and even communities. Deb Yolin, a mother of two Needham High School boys, Zach and Gabe Raley, said “yes” when a 16-year-old Ghanaian boarding school student and soccer player needed a place to stay over winter break. And a few years later she said “yes” again to a request to finance a new source of clean drinking water for his village.
Neither the Needham family nor the student, Augustine Boadi, now 20, ever imagined the journey that started in 2021. Augie first stayed with the Yolin/Raleys when he was on break from Northfield Mount Hermon in Gill in January 2021. A soccer coach who was providing training to both Augie and Gabe asked the the family to give Augie a place to live in Needham and drive him to the training sessions. Augie then lived with them again from March-May 2021, when Northfield Mount Hermon students had to attend school remotely. After the school reopened, he continued to spend school breaks with the family, and he still visits regularly on break from his New York university.
“We are his second family,” Yolin said. Augie has become like a brother to Zach, 16, and Gabe, 15. And in June, Augie invited the Yolin and the Raley brothers to his village, Adankwame, home to about 800 families, where they saw the borehole they financed gush water for the first time.
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“When the water came up, there was a (Ghanaian) song of thanks playing,” said Augie, a junior at St. John’s University in Queens where he studies sports management and plays midfield on its Division 1 soccer team. “The timing was just perfect. The song summed up the gratitude I have toward Deb, my community and all the people who contributed. It was just an amazing moment.”
Augie was just 11 years old and living in a rural village when staff from Rising Stars Academy, more than five hours from his home, recognized his talent and offered him admission. After his parents learned that he would get an education, not just soccer training, they welcomed the opportunity for their youngest child. While there, Augie took his studies seriously and often hung out with English-speaking staff in order to improve his English. When the Thrive League, an American nonprofit that recruits international students for boarding schools, offered him a full scholarship at age 14 to a New England boarding school, he was one step closer to realizing his dream.
“Everyone in Ghana wants to be a professional soccer player and take advantage of opportunities to travel outside the country, but not everyone is qualified for that,” he said. “My parents have worked so hard and weren’t able to get an education, so they were excited that I was going to have that opportunity.”
Augie often talked about his life in Ghana, as well as his appreciation for life here. When he first arrived in the United States, he marveled that he only had to turn on a faucet to get all the cold — and even hot — water he wanted. When the village rain barrels held too little water, his mother had to walk a mile to get dirty water from the river for her family.
“Augie had told us so much about his home, and I knew we needed to go there to understand who he was and to meet his family,” Yolin said. “I also wanted to do something for the village so I asked his brother, Collins, what he suggested. Two weeks later, he said, ‘I don’t know how to ask you this, but I will. We have to go to the river to get water, and what we need is access to clean water.”
Yolin, a senior vice president who oversees comprehensive clinical programs for people with chronic kidney disease, knew nothing about water projects. But after decades of working to improve the health of underserved populations, she knew the importance of water on health. She was unprepared for the request, but immediately said yes.
“I thought, ‘I can’t believe I had thought we were just bringing soccer jerseys and equipment, and instead, we’re going to provide water’,” she said. “I had no idea how much it would cost, but I just understood that water is a basic need and right, and that we had to make it happen.”
All the logistics were handled by Augie’s brothers, Collins, a teacher, and Paul, an architect, and by Augie’s former teacher in Ghana, now living in Worcester. They did the research and planning, and hired a surveyor and a contracting company to site and build the borehole, a narrow shaft drilled into the ground to extract water. To pay for it, Yolin raised $10,500 from a GoFundMe campaign, and she contributed additional money of her own. Gabe’s club soccer team, MLS Boston Bolts, donated training jerseys to the village and cleats to Rising Stars Academy.
After Yolin, her sons and Augie arrived at an Airbnb in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on June 27, they spent a few days getting familiar with the city. Then they drove five hours to a motel in the city of Kumasi, their base for the daily 45-minute trips to Augie’s village.
In Adankwame, they watched the crew dig the borehole 90 feet deep and set up the electric pump, and when water exploded 10 feet into the air on July 4, “It was like fireworks,” Yolin said. “There was a huge celebration with clapping and cheering. All the village leaders spoke and everyone was so happy. I also had this overwhelming sense of happiness. I couldn’t believe it was that (relatively) simple to do a project that has such an impact on quality of life and health.’’
Other moments of jubilation followed. The following day, Gabe joined a soccer match between two rival teams in the village, playing half the game with one side and half with the other. Nearly the entire village came to watch and children danced and sang. Gabe, who has traveled internationally with his soccer team, said he has seen how soccer can connect people from other countries.
“But I was surprised that it seemed like everyone was so happy to see us play, and that felt really good,” he said.
Zach, whose passion is art, preserved the spirit in a room-size mural he spray-painted on the village’s school wall. “One People” depicts the American and the Ghanaian flags, connected by a black star, a symbol of unity.
“I feel humbled that I left a piece of my artwork there,” he said.
For Augie, the trip was everything he’d hoped for and more.
“It meant so much to have Gabe play on the field I played on and to have Zach paint a mural on my former school and for them to experience things that had such a huge impact on my life,” Augie said. “I can tell all these stories and show pictures, but it was really special for them to meet my family and the community. Ghanaians are very community-oriented, and one of their strengths is the sense of togetherness. We may not be the most developed country, but we share joy together and we suffer together.”
Since the Deb, Zach and Gabe returned to Needham July 7, an exterior structure and water tank have been added, and women daily turn a spigot to draw water into the metal buckets they carry on their heads.
“My mom thanked me for bringing honor to the family, and it was very deep for me to hear her say that,” he said. “I always wanted to give back, but never thought I’d be able to do that while still in college.”
Recently, Yolin established a nonprofit which allows people to make tax-deductible charitable donations to do more projects in Ghana. Augie would like to see other villages get boreholes and to see living conditions improved at Rising Stars Academy. Yolin named it “San Kofa Vision,” which essentially means “to look back and never forget where you came from as you look forward in life” in Twi, Augie’s native language.
“That is what Augie has done,” she said. “He’s a hero in the village because he left and he came back to do good things.”
Augie hopes the next time his American family comes to Adankwame, his mother can show Deb how to cook jollof, a Ghanaian rice dish made with spices and sometimes vegetable and meat. “I’m just so thankful,” he said. “And my mother was all joy when we told her about potentially doing that with someone who has fed me and helped me.”
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