Children/Youth Programs/Education

Western Heritage Home Scholars

WHH ScholarsWestern Heritage Home started supporting their "WHH Scholars", with our help in 2007.

The continued support of the education of these children is our first and foremost responsibility. With little to no family support, they will have to rely on their own wits and skills as adults. We must prepare them as well as possible.

We nostalgically keep the photo on the left---the "family" back when they were little! But they're almost grown up now! 

These children---always referred to as "scholars" (not orphans)---were sheltered in the Western Heritage Children's Home for about five years. Ghana Together funded their room, board, and local staff to care for them.

But, Ghana is changing rapidly. By late 2011, the WHH leadership, especially the women members, felt uncomfortable with children living long-term in an institution, no matter how well-managed. And, about that time, WHH was notified by the Ghanaian Government's Women and Children's Department that it was phasing out orphanages and children's homes, except for the most desperately ill or disabled children, and that WHH's license to operate would  not be renewed after 2011.

And so they phased out their Children's Home in a responsible, orderly fashion. But we continue to support these scholars as they progress through their schooling, including senior high school and into tertiary schools like Asanta Nursing/Midwifery College and Takoradi Technical University...and into adulthood.

 

Apewosika School Scholarships

Apewosika Scholarship StudentsStarting Sept 2012 school year, we continue to support about 40 primary students on scholarship at the little Apewosika Village private school.

Government schools are tuition free---including through senior high in 2018. But not all neighborhoods are within reasonable walking distance to government schools. Apowesika is such a village...in fact, we were told the name itself means something like: "I may be poor but I don't owe anyone!" And poor it is---a traditional fishing village on a peninsula, cut off by tides and distance.

Apowesika School

So, we support children in the upper primary grades in this little private school because the parents, knowing a little reading and math is better than none, take the older children out to be able to afford sending the younger siblings.

The school was founded by a Ghanaian teacher at the end of her life and is now run by her son, David, the Headmaster, and her daughter Mercy, the Ghana Library Authority Western Regional Library Director.

This Apewosika Mom gave us permisssion to take her photo with her children, whom she desperately wants to go to school.

 

 

Community Development Vocational/Technical Institute Scholarships

CDVTI Scholarship Students

CDVTI prepares young women and men in many vocations---sewing, hairdressing, computers, welding, etc. We love this school and have funded students there since our inception.