The walk through the haphazardly planned township of Fadama is not a smooth one. You have to stop from time to time to scan the road to avoid stepping into wastewater on the ground due to lack of a proper drainage system.

Several child development center workers from the Church of Pentecost Fadama went into Fadama to identify impoverished children in the community to be registered into their new center.

As the four team members turned a corner, they collided with a little boy who had been angrily shoved out of a wooden structure that serves as a place where people go to buy food and eat. Such spots in Ghana are popularly called “chop bars.”

The boy was thin, in worn-out clothes and with no sandals to protect his feet from the filth on the ground. His name was Fred. (more…)

Letters from sponsors come in to the Ghana office through the Global Ministry Center (GMC) in Colorado Springs. They come in mainly by DHL, but a few letters also come in through e-mail.

When these letters are received they are sorted out and entered into the computer system to track that they were received. They are then distributed into pigeon hole mailboxes created for every church partner at the country office.

The next step is for the child development workers from the child development centers to come to the country office to collect the letters, get them to the children, make sure that the letters are replied to and then bring the replies to the country office in good time to be sent to the sponsors.

Compassion Ghana started its Child Sponsorship Program barely three years ago. The majority of the children who were registered into the program were not in school. They only got the opportunity to go to school once they were enrolled into Compassion.

As such, even though some of our children are 12 years old, you find them yet in kindergarten or in the first grade. The best children in these grades can say the alphabet and read two- or three-letter words.

So in Ghana, just a few of our children are able to read and write their own letters. It is therefore the responsibility of the child development workers at the centers, and when possible, some volunteers who help at the centers, to read letters to the children and reply to these letters.

Nana Kojo Sekyi-Arthur is the social worker at the Mount Zion Methodist Church Child Development Center. He has been with the center since it started almost three years ago. Nana Kogo, just like all the other child development workers, visits the country office once every week, if there is no emergency.

Each time he visits, he checks the center’s pigeon hole for any mail or other materials placed there by the office. If there happens to be any correspondence from sponsors to children, Nana Kojo collects them and brings them back to his office. As soon as he gets there, he makes photo copies of all the letters. The original is given to the child to take home, and the copied one is kept on file for reference purposes.

In the community where Nana Kojo works, the people are mostly fisher folks with very little or no formal education at all. They are unable to assist their children with responding to sponsor letters.

For unscheduled letters, which are not too many, when Nana Kojo collects the letters from the country office he makes sure to read all of them before meeting the children again.

The next time the children come to the center the letters are distributed. The older children who can read and write are encouraged to read their own letters and try to write replies to them. There are a number of volunteers who help.

Georgina and Enoch are volunteers who give a lot of assistance with the letters. They correct the older children’s letters. They also read through to see if the sponsor has asked any questions and whether they have been answered. If everything is done well, Nana Kojo copies all the letters into an exercise book.

Every child has an exercise book specially set aside for letters. Each letter the child writes to his sponsor is copied into these exercise books. When writing the next letter, the previous ones are read again so as not to keep repeating the same things over and over again. The children then copy their letters onto the appropriate sheets designed for letter writing by the country office.

The next letters to be written belong to the children who cannot read or write. For this group, Nana Kojo likes to work on the letters personally. He reads the letter to the child. If there is some information the sponsor asks that Nana Kojo cannot provide and the child cannot help with, Nana Kojo goes to the child’s house or invites the parents to the office to help in providing the information needed to complete the letter. (more…)

Meet Victoria. A 10-year-old girl living on the coast of Ghana. She lives with her aunt, Mercy. Madam Mercy’s name is fitting: Mercy took Vic in when her father abandoned her and her mother wasn’t emotionally able to care for her…she has also taken in two other nieces and nephews, on top of raising her own two children.

“I realized that if I do not do something we could lose Victoria…I have not regretted even though things are not too good economically. I get so satisfied just looking at how beautifully she is growing.”

Mercy sells fish and her husband is a fisherman. Life is not easy. Things would have been much more difficult but for the intervention of Compassion International through the Glory Assemblies of God Child Development Center.

“There was no way I could enroll [the children] into any school but for Compassion. My prayer every day is for the work of Compassion International to flourish in the life of these children; so that they too will be in a position to sponsor some needy children when they grow up. God bless you sponsors; may everything you do be blessed; thank you Compassion.”

Victoria goes to school during the week and spends eight hours at the child development center every Saturday.

Spend a Saturday with Vic.