Sefwi Bekwai · Western North Region · Ghana
Finding courage and purpose to empower youth.
Before the international platforms and the AI research, Richard spent years building civic identity through churches, community halls, and district assemblies across Ghana's Western North Region — learning that lasting change requires organised structure, not good intentions alone.
2018–2019 · Western North Region
Self church education and civic identity.
Richard's civic journey began in churches across Sefwi Bekwai and the Western North Region — not as a recipient but as an organiser. He led sensitisation sessions on youth development, education, and community responsibility inside congregations that trusted him with their platforms. The Church of Pentecost, Methodist Church, CAC Bekwai, and others became the first institutions that gave him a room full of people and a message to deliver. This is where he learned to speak, to listen, and to build trust before asking for anything.
2019–2021 · Western North Region
Peace campaigns, radio, and the NCCE.
Richard joined national peace campaigns under NUSSA, participated in radio peace talks with regional media across the Western North Region, and collaborated with Ghana's National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) in Bibiani Anhwiaso. In a region where electoral tension and civic mistrust can derail development, building peace infrastructure is not peripheral — it is foundational. These campaigns connected Richard to district governance structures, regional media houses, and civic leaders who later became partners in his youth work.
2019 · Sefwi Bekwai District
Co-founding the Sefwi Bekwai Youth Movement.
In 2019, Richard co-founded the Sefwi Bekwai Youth Movement (BYM) — a grassroots platform designed to organise, inform, and mobilise young people across the Sefwi Bekwai district of Ghana's Western North Region. BYM was built on a core conviction: informal gatherings don't produce lasting change. Only structured youth platforms with clear mandates, media presence, and institutional linkages do. BYM held community events, engaged regional media, and created space for youth voices in local development conversations. It later evolved into the Sefwi Bekwai Youth Parliament — with democratic processes and a formal mandate to engage the district assembly.
2020 · National · Accra, Ghana
UNYA-Ghana Youth Parliament — Parliament House, Accra.
Richard joined the United Nations Youth Association Ghana (UNYA-Ghana) Youth Parliament, representing Sefwi Bekwai and the Western North Region at the national level. He engaged with parliamentary processes at Parliament House in Accra, contributed to national youth policy discussions, and built cross-regional networks that connected local grassroots work to national governance structures. He also visited the Paramount Chief of Sefwi Anhwiawso-Bibiani — recognising that community development requires traditional authority as much as institutional legitimacy.
2021 · Bibiani Anhwiaso District
Bibiani Anhwiaso Municipal Youth Parliament.
Elected to the Bibiani Anhwiaso Municipal Youth Parliament, Richard deepened his engagement with local government and district-level policy processes. This institutional fluency — understanding how district assemblies function, how motions are debated, how decisions filter into budgets and services — directly informed his later work on AI governance frameworks and accountability systems for community-led programmes. Local governance is where the abstract becomes real.
2021 · University of Education, Winneba
Forming the Ubuntu UEW Chapter.
While studying at the University of Education, Winneba, Richard founded the Ubuntu UEW Chapter — a peer network grounded in the African philosophy of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.” The chapter created space for students to support each other through shared knowledge, collaborative study, and mutual accountability. This experience in peer-led learning systems became one of the structural models that later informed EGA Mentorship International's cohort-based programme design.
2021 · Accra, Ghana
Visiting UN organisations to pitch youth empowerment ideas.
In 2021, Richard travelled to Accra to visit UN organisations and international institutions — not as a delegate but as a young person with ideas and the confidence to present them. These visits to international offices demonstrated something important: the ideas Richard had been developing in Sefwi Bekwai's churches, community halls, and youth parliaments were coherent enough to present on a global stage. This moment of being received seriously — of having a conversation with international institutions — became a turning point. The world was bigger than the Western North Region, and it was accessible.
What all of this built
Every step in Sefwi Bekwai was preparation for EGA.
The church sensitisations taught communication. BYM taught structure and accountability. UNYA-Ghana taught how institutions work from the inside. The Ubuntu chapter taught peer learning. The UN organisation visits proved the ideas were globally relevant. Together, they gave Richard the conviction to build EGA Mentorship International — a programme designed to remove the friction between ambition and access for young Africans everywhere.