Kaneshie Street Children Project

Over the last ten years, Hearts for Ghana Mission has been interacting with some of the young children living and working in and around the Kaneshie Market area to help alleviate their plight. We currently have many  street children that we interact with every week who avail themselves of the services that we provide, which include:

Personal Development: We provide them with personal development and motivational instruction that covers; Personal Hygiene; Physical & Mental Fitness and Personal Counselling Programs.

Skills for Life: A training programme that helps to improve the basic skills of numeracy and literacy levels of targeted Street Children.

The Formal Education Assistance: whereby Street Children who dropped out of school and wish to go back, will be enrolled and supported back into local JHS or SHS.

Non Formal Educational: where some of the youth will be enrolled in apprenticeship or job training programs.

Health Support: Many Street Children have health issues that go untreated for months on end. Accidents and Emergencies often lead to death if not disabilities. The Project’s Health Support activity provides the children with; National Health Registration; Financial Support for Medicine and Treatment and Monitoring of Treatment and prescription drug taking.

It is estimated from credible sources such as The Kaneshie District Police and other bodies that approximately 3,000 children and young adults aged 7 to 16 are living and working on the streets of Kaneshie. Most of these homeless children engage in all forms of economic activities to earn a living. As a result a high percentage tends to commit a lot of social vices and criminal acts before the age of twenty one.

Hearts for Ghana Mission’s objectives in working with the street children in Accra  are:

Programme Objectives

• To learn more about the street children, their needs and expectations.
• To counsel the children so as to enable them to decide what they want to do with their lives.
• To provide basic skills training for those children that show desire to improve
• To assist those children that wish to continue with their formal education
• To provide the children in and around Accra , with safe living environment to live and work

Programme Activities

The scope of activities for the street children project covers the following areas:

• Personal Development
• Skills for Life
• Formal Education
• Non Formal Education
• Health Support
• Street Children Research & Feasibility Study

These programs are designed to focus on meeting the immediate needs of the children and protecting them from harm with a long term view of ensuring lasting change transitioning from childhood to independent adulthood. It also emphasize the need to take a broader family and community approach to benefit the participants.