By Geoff LoCicero
VCU School of Social Work

The school had well-established international learning opportunities for students in the Dominican Republic, Belize and Guyana when the two faculty members set off looking for another location. Buerlein admits that Ghana was a “random” selection at the time, based in part on the connection of another faculty member’s pastor having visited the country recently, and the fact that Ghana, in West Africa, is an English-speaking country.

From those loose threads, a strong legacy was woven in the product of a community school, Grace Life International, that was built from the ground up in large part through the donations and sweat equity of VCU Rams and Richmonders over a decade.

“For me, I think the partnership between VCU and this amazing school in rural Africa is just a true honor and a testament to the possibilities that can happen when different people share a common dream and work together to make it happen,” Buerlein says now.

“With the recent freeze on foreign aid and funding global projects, it is more important than ever that individuals and groups of volunteers step up to continue the work of peace building and global partnerships, one project at a time.” 

‘Why is Daddy always going away?’

Grace Life International has recognized both Buerlein and Peay, who passed away in 2020, by naming the first and second floors of the original school building after them. While Buerlein did not attend, Peay’s widow, Sandra, and 15 other family members, including her children and grandchildren, traveled for the naming ceremony in the summer of 2024.

For the Peays’ two children, Thomas and Trina, it was finally an opportunity to see firsthand what their father built and to reach a deeper understanding of the commitment that took him away from family over winter break year after year for service trips to Ghana.

“My children got to see,” Sandra says. “They were always wanting to know, ‘Why is Daddy always going away at Christmastime?’ They finally got an opportunity to see what he was actually doing.”

What Peay, Buerlein and student volunteers helped construct is now a three-building complex in the village of Adoteiman, serving more than 400 children in preschool, primary school and junior high school. They literally built from the foundation up, mixing cement and laying rebar.

“He was a skilled builder,” Buerlein says of her colleague, who owned a construction company and built his own house as well as a subdivision for first-time Black homeowners, Rose of Sharon, in Richmond’s South Side. “He had all those skills and taught students, too.”

Small steps and cinder blocks

The tight bond between VCU and Grace Life International, more than 5,200 miles away, started almost by chance, a tenuous thread catching at just the right moment.

On the ground in Ghana in 2004, as several early partnership opportunities failed to pan out, Buerlein and Peay heard about a Sunday afternoon program to feed children living on the streets of Accra and to provide them with Bible studies and activities.

“It was pretty remarkable what they were doing, and it was kind of a miracle, too, because we stumbled upon it,” Buerlein says. “I think we knew this is who we wanted to partner with, because we learned that a couple had purchased land about 45 minutes outside Accra, and it was their dream to build a school. But there was no money, there was no funding.”

Buerlein and Peay mobilized their networks to begin fundraising at a grassroots level in Virginia and shipping building materials. Back in Ghana, those materials were used to make cement blocks by hand, one at a time.

“You can’t just go to Lowe’s or Home Depot,” Buerlein says. “You’ve got a building made completely of cinder blocks. Progress was very, very slow.”

By 2005, the school’s library was completed, and the Ghanaian founders, the Rev. Eric Kwasi Annan and his wife, Felicia, began to bring children from the streets of Accra to attend.

“VCU’s involvement with Grace Life International School has likely had a profound impact on both the students and the community,” Annan says. “The legacy of this partnership is seen in the existence of the school buildings, the attendance of children to the school from the community over the years and our connections with the people of America, especially the students of VCU and the leaders that came with the students – Randi Buerlein and Bob Peay.”

Three nights, $50,000 – and ongoing support

In 2004, Buerlein and Peay began bringing VCU students to Ghana for service projects each winter break. Fortune favored the school again when Chris Burnside, who met Buerlein through mutual work on an LGBTQ-focused committee at VCU, became involved. The former dance instructor, having recently retired as assistant dean at the School of the Arts, accepted Buerlein’s invitation to travel to Ghana in January 2006.

“It was an eye-opening experience and really impactful,” Burnside says. “The homeless children really affected me. I got home and said, ‘I don’t know how to process this.’”

His instincts were to help, using his artistic talents and leveraging his experience from an AIDS benefit in the late 1980s. With an assist from Carolyn Henne, his administrative replacement in VCUarts, Burnside created an interdisciplinary service-learning course across two semesters that served as an incubator for a new benefit for the school in Ghana. In 2007, with support from students, the three-night For Africa fundraiser at Grace Street Theater generated nearly $50,000. Annan traveled to Richmond to attend the performances.

“It was huge for this project,” Buerlein says. “We were able to raise about $2,000 a year to donate until the For Africa benefit. The proceeds from this event enabled us to advance the development of the school significantly in the following year.”

The For Africa project was awarded VCU’s first Currents of Change Award in 2008, and Buerlein was honored in 2009 in the Presidential Awards for Community Multicultural Enrichment.

“It is really an honor to win this award because it represents the ideas that many of us strive to build at VCU,” Buerlein said at the time. “Working with people who have different values … forces us to evaluate our own values. It takes a bit of courage. The experience can be transforming because it is personal and it is real.”

Burnside noted how one of the student event planners from his class made a $1,000 donation at the For Africa benefit.

“I said, ‘I don’t know how much wine you’ve had,’ and he said, ‘I haven’t had any wine; this is what I’m doing.’” Burnside recalls. “People in the class were so involved and inspired by the project, and at least one changed their major to social work. And the person at the center of the vortex was Randi.”

Peay retired in 2005 and Buerlein in 2013, but she remains connected to Ghana and more broadly with VCU international opportunities through the Randi Buerlein Scholarship for Service-Learning Education Abroad, established through a gift from her husband, Douglas. She continues to stay in touch with the Annans, as do alumni who participated in the service trips. Grace Life International still has needs, primarily around books and computers. When specific needs have arisen – a van for the school or funding for annual holiday parties – Buerlein has put out the word, and former students have stepped up with donations.

“They welcome volunteers, if you want to teach, if you want to work on a building,” she says. “The partnership between VCU and this school in Ghana just speaks to me of what’s possible when different people can come together. It’s like the saying, ‘it takes a village’; it does. It takes so many different people to make something like that really happen, to really come true.”

To learn more about this project or volunteering in Ghana, contact Buerlein at rbuerlein@gmail.com. The VCU School of Social Work’s ties to the country continue through a summer study abroad program through VCU's Global Education Office led by associate professor Nicole Corley, Ph.D. In spring 2025, she helped pioneer a new virtual exchange program with financial support from the Global Education Office, a four-week online pilot connecting students and curriculum with a faculty colleague and students at the University of Ghana’s Department of Social Work.