+ Samuel Quarcoo’s crusade started by happenstance in 1999, when a third-grade teacher asked him to visit her class and give a presentation about Ghana, his African homeland. Quarcoo, who lives in Rockville, Md., was then a math teacher at Wheaton Woods Elementary School in Montgomery County. He showed the kids some photos of his old neighborhood school in Ghana and explained that the students often did not have basic supplies such as pencils and notebooks. A few days after his visit, the teacher informed him that her students wanted to donate money to buy school supplies for a few classrooms in Ghana, where the poverty rate was then about 39 percent, he said.