Everyone Makes a Mark

Ryerson alumna Stephanie Asare Nti is creating a better future for children worldwide

Stephanie Asare Nti, Social Work ’01 is a global go-getter. And she has a 2012 Ryerson University Alumni Achievement Award to prove it.

After graduating from Ryerson and completing a master’s degree at the University of Toronto, Asare Nti wanted to make a difference globally. So she approached celebrated humanitarian Stephen Lewis for an internship. Lewis, who was then the United Nations (UN) Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and is now a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson, was impressed with the young Ghana-born woman and he helped her land a placement at the Global AIDS Alliance in Washington, D.C.

In the years that have followed, Asare Nti has volunteered for Lewis’s Toronto-based AIDS foundation and co-ordinated high-level international meetings for the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS. Through her work as a consultant to UNICEF and USAID, she has been involved in policy initiatives supporting the strengthening of child protection systems and the social welfare workforce that cares for orphans and vulnerable children.

Clearly, the need is great and Asare Nti is making her mark by working to fill it. In 2006, she founded Social Workers Beyond Borders (SWBB), a non-governmental organization that enables North American social work students and professionals to volunteer in developing countries. Currently, SWBB is forging a partnership with the African Union Youth Volunteers Corps to support exchanges for the continent’s next generation of social work leaders.

A labour of love, SWBB is just one of the ways that Asare Nti is living her favourite African proverb: “In times of darkness, one must stop searching for the light, and become the flame for others to follow.” Learn more about Stephanie Asare Nti’s work to help the world’s most vulnerable at www.ryerson.ca/marks.

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