Before the Center of Good News came, “It was like living in a hole.”
In 2005, the Center set out to make a difference in a very poor district in Northern Ghana about 150 km the Center. The above statement was made by the leader of one of the seven villages we visited this week. As we talked to all the community leaders, the same sentiment was expressed in many different ways: “Our children now know that they are not alone, that other people love them;” “The women are now suffering less;” and “The gap between that time and now is very long.”
Three people, real heroes, who work for the Center are delivering all types of interventions to these communities. Some of these villages are so isolated that none of their children ever went to school. So education of children is a Center priority, so they are building schools, supporting teachers, providing school materials, and administering a child school sponsorship program. The Center supports a school feeding program too, ensuring every child gets a hot lunch 5 days a week.
Some communities are fortunate enough to participate in the Center’s She-Goat Program. In one community, 53 children were given a goat. The goat is not killed, rather bred so the offspring can be sold to pay for school fees (Ghana government charges each student) and pay for family necessities. Some of the offspring become a source of meat for the family too.
The education of children was not the only area lacking, but adults too were hungry to change their lives too. The Center provides business skill training, health, hygiene and nutrition courses, and other life skill training. The Center not only taught about heath and hygiene, but has built public restrooms and water systems to improve daily living conditions and to prevent the spread of diseases.
The Center in cooperation with an international partner is providing micro-loans to women to start small businesses. This has radically changed families. They now have a source of income, rather than being 100% dependent upon farming to survive.
While I would like to say that the Center work is done, it is far from over. These seven communities still lack so much. Every child is not sponsored, there is not enough micro-loan funds to meet the incredible demand, more schools are needed, some schools are built but children must sit on the concrete because no furniture can be purchased, some of the wells are still far from some communities, and the list goes on and on.
The reason I went was to learn first hand the work and needs of these villages. About half of my time in Ghana will be spent trying to develop relationships with Ghanaian and foreign organizations and people to develop stable funding sources for all these and many other humanitarian projects. This aspect of my work is daunting to say the least, so please pray that God directs me in all that I do with wisdom. Your support of this mission will help expand all these works in these communities and hopefully to the other 50% of communities that are without any interventions in this poor area.
God also gave me an opportunity to share Jesus, when I was asked to pray over a girl who was recently paralyzed from the waist down. The village took her out of the hospital due to farming season (couldn’t afford having people tend to her in the hospital. The health need is so great with only one clinic in this large area staffed by a physician assistant. Please pray for them and thank God for the great resources we have in the Western World.