Shawn Rubin and his wife, Laura Westberg, with their son, Asher, at their home on Crescent Street.

The Providence Journal Glenn Osmundson

PROVIDENCE — A friendship forged five years ago in Ghana has led to a lasting partnership between two educators that is changing the fortunes of a small city in West Africa.

In 2003, Shawn Rubin, a teacher at Highlander Charter School, and his wife, Laura Westberg, an architect, embarked on an 18-month sabbatical, traveling around the world working for nongovernmental organizations. During their travels, they met Meshach Bondzie, the founder of a nonprofit secretarial school in Abeka, Ghana. The couple was inspired by Bondzie’s remarkable vision: to create job opportunities for women who would otherwise find themselves peddling cheap wares on the street.

“Secretarial work provides a good future,” Rubin said. “It allows the women to bring money back to their families, which lets them save money so their children don’t have to drop out of school. That changes the paradigm.”

The school itself, however, was a bit of a jumble: a handful of ancient typewriters, their ribbons frayed, sitting in a roofless church.

In their conversations with Bondzie, Rubin and Westberg realized that a little money would go a long way toward helping the school prepare young adults for a career that might lift them out of poverty. When the couple returned to Rhode Island, they approached friends and colleagues about donating money toward the purchase of new typewriters and computers. The response, Rubin said, was nothing short of overwhelming.

“I couldn’t ignore the fact that I could make a difference,” said Rubin, who is 32 and has a toddler son. “It snowballed from there.”

As donations began pouring in, Rubin realized that he needed to set up a nonprofit organization to manage the money. A friend at the Rhode Island Foundation not only helped the couple kick off a fundraising campaign but allowed them to use his nonprofit organization until they could create their own.

Last year, two friends, John LaVall and Jessica Jennings, offered to visit the village and make a documentary film about the school. Once posted on the couple’s Web site, www.golongitude.org., the video became a big draw, attracting fresh donors.

Rubin realized that it was time to create his own nonprofit organization. The name, Longitude, seemed like a perfect fit because the organization’s mission is to connect people with a shared vision across cultures and along longitudinal map lines that link the northern and southern hemispheres.

The momentum continued this year as eighth-graders from Highlander and a senior from Moses Brown School held fundraisers. Longitude raised $1,000 recently after showing the Ghana documentary at the Met School’s Public Street theater.

Rubin, a teacher at heart, can’t believe his good fortune, which he attributes to the kindness of friends and colleagues.

“The best part is that this has allowed me to interact with so many people in Rhode Island,” he said. “An elderly woman left me a message that she had seven secretarial books that she had been saving all these years and could she donate them. She was so excited that we wanted them. It turns out they are incredibly useful. We’ve already mailed them to Ghana.”

Rubin thinks that it’s Rhode Island’s smallness — a twist on the old joke, “I know a guy who knows a guy” — that has contributed to his start-up’s success. He mentions the two women from the Rhode Island Foundation who helped him write his mission statement and the volunteer who designed his Web site free of charge.

Meanwhile, the school in Abeka has blossomed. The Professional Secretarial Academy of Ghana has moved to a new space, a three-room schoolhouse that Bondzie leases from a middle school. And Longitude has raised $50,000, which has paid for nine new typewriters, 15 computers and countless supplies.

This summer, Rubin is launching a new initiative, sending Longitude’s first teacher to Ghana. The teacher, Judah Lakin from Hope High School, has a number of West African students in his class and he wants to learn more about their culture. Last summer, Lakin and another teacher traveled to the Dominican Republic to meet some of the families of their high school students.

While Lakin is soaking up Ghanian culture, he will teach English and math at a middle school during the day and computer skills at the secretarial school at night. And Rubin hopes that the two teachers will keep the conversation going long after Lakin returns from his five-week trip.

Longitude is launching a capital campaign this fall to raise $75,000 to buy land for a combined community center and school in Abeka. It seems that the village chief has dreamed of building a place where everyone can come together. The building, Rubin hopes, will house a health center and a computer lab as well as classrooms.

In the end, Rubin says, it all comes down to relationships and the mutual trust they engender:

“You are putting your energy into something where you get so much for so little,” he said. “That’s one of the most powerful feelings for us.”

lborg@projo.com