Not for Sale in Ghana

Not For Sale seeks to improve the lives of all children forced to work under such harsh conditions, offering them opportunities for development and education. As a part of these efforts, our NFS Ghana team supports a safe house that provides education, health care, and a community to 23 former trafficked children.  However, 20 acres of land has been donated to our NFS Ghana team which will be used to create a long-term community for these children. The goal of the new Freedom Center is to provide the children with a safe place to live and grow with quality education, extra-curricular activities, and a vocational school.

With your support Not for Sale will:

• Build three safe houses and an additional facility for volunteers and staff
• Establish a health facility and vocational school
• Provide education and health care to all children living at the center
• Build a soccer field

Each home will house as many as twenty-four children and cost $50, 000 USD to build. The expected total building costs for the Freedom Center totals $223,000 USD. Expected monthly operating costs for the community total $4,236 USD.

After housing has been established for the children, a soccer field will be built on the land. The soccer field will provide the children a chance to participate in organized sports, an avenue through which they can re-socialize themselves. It will also provide an avenue through which the children can find self worth after the demoralizing work they have done and lives they have led. The estimated costs to build a soccer field are $8,000 USD. This amount includes the grass, equipment, and jerseys for the childre

The Background

In a village on the shores of the largest man-made lake on the surface of the earth lies a major hub for trafficked children amidst Ghana’s fishing industry. Children as young as three are seen as favorable workers because their nimble fingers are able to release small fish from the masses of nets. Often they are put at great risk when forced to untangle nets below the water’s surface. Many of these children are given only one meal a day, consisting of a single bowl of gari soaked in the lake water, resulting in undernourishment and serious health-related concerns.

Because of cultural values in Ghana, children frequently grow up in the homes of family members or friends in the community whom their parents view as financially better off. Unfortunately, this custom and ideology provide the basis for the exploitation of children in the Lake Volta region, and traffickers take advantage of the cheap labor offered by these vulnerable kids. Moreover, the dire economic situation forces both parents and traffickers to see only the immediate benefits of forcing these children to work in the fishing industry. They become valued as a source of income and are robbed of the opportunity to receive an education for their future.

Donate to the  NFS Ghana

Join Us Today: Success Story of Joe and William

Joe now eight years old and William now twelve years old, are brothers trafficked within Ghana to an island community on Lake Volta. They were sold by their parents for an agreement to work for three years. Joe was sold for a mere GH₵ 20 (about $13 USD) to the chief of the village, who owned about a dozen children prior purchasing Joe and William. The chief sent his own children to school while he used trafficked children to work repairing nets, bailing water, and casting nets on the lake. On June 21, 2009 the day the chief agreed to release William to the Not for Sale Ghana shelter, William timidly kept his head down with tears rolling down his cheeks.  Disconnected, he said nothing at all to crowd gathered around him.  The adults on the island claimed he was simply shy. However, William eventually revealed to the NFS Ghana team that he was not scared at all, but simply did not want to leave his younger brother, Joe. Fortunately, the chief agreed to release Joe at that same moment and the brothers were taken to the Not for Sale Ghana Shelter. Upon arriving at the shelter, the other seventeen children greeted them like old friends and took them in as family. William was able to attend some school before he was trafficked to Lake Volta and is teaching his younger brother, Joe, to take the first step in his own education by teaching him to write his name. After only three months of being home schooled, both boys have been accepted into the local private school and will start attending shortly.