Meet Yasmine Fosu, a 16 year old who won 3 continental medals in Fencing, an olympic sport.

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This is my third post on my series #PersonofInterest where I post profiles of great young people across the world impacting their generation so that we can all be motivated on our individual quests.(Hope yours is a good one though). I delved into sports and saw a shining star named Yasmine Fosu. She is a young girl achieving greatness in sports. I hope she takes her prowess to the World Olympics.

Quick Fact. I was a short distance(100m) sprinter way back in St. Peter's Senior High School, Nkwatia, Ghana but my career was cut short early. Am sure other athletes saw me as a formidable force so, you know. . . . Today isn't my profile day so enough with the talking and lets get back to where we started.

Meet Yasmine Fosu,

Yasmine is a 16 years old rising star. Not only is she straight A student but also she is breaking barriers in the sport of fencing as the first individual Ghanaian in any sport to be ranked in top 100 senior rankings. It was from the age of 8 that Yasmine started fencing. By the age of 11 she was the UK under 11 Champion, the first UK girl of African descent to do this. She later became under 13 Champion at which time she had a choice to represent a country and compete internationally. It was widely assumed by her coaches that she would represent Great Britain and was subsequently invited to Team GB development programmes. However Yasmin shocked everyone when she declared that she wanted to compete for Ghana.

Rather than “fit in” Yasmine had the view that she should be accepted on her own terms and wanted to represent Ghana to encourage other youth in the Diaspora to also embrace their heritage. Yasmine is of mixed Ghanaian and Iranian descent but feels inherently more Ghanaian than anything else. Representing Ghana Yasmin has broken the monopoly of North African nations in fencing on the continent. No subSaharan African country had ever won an international medal in Fencing. However, Yasmine soon changed that in 2014, when she won her first Continental medal for Ghana, and then in 2015 she won two Continental medals at the African Championships. She also won a Silver medal in the British Youth Championships, and Gold in British Schools Championships as Master at Arms, these were breakthrough moments as it represented the first t ime an African has won British youth t itles since records began in the 1860’s.

Yasmine is also highly academic and has earned the respect of her teachers and peers. She attends the prestigious Milfield School where she is a Prefect chosen from selected students. She is the first Ghanaian at that Senior School. The school has had Olympians at every Olympic Games since the 1960’s. Yasmine has ambitions to set up a charity to collect and disperse sports equipment to African Federations. She is also working on an initiative this year to improve Girls access to education in Ghana.

Hope you enjoyed reading.

#Courtesy of Future of Ghana Publication.

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