Happy New Year everyone!
Over the Christmas break we undertook a project with JayNii Streetwise orphanage, and we’re excited to finally tell you all about it.
JayNii Streetwise is a charity and non-governmental organisation established in 2011, that exists to improve the lives of the young children in the Jamestown area in Accra. Their mission is to support, educate and empower children by providing sustainable education and practical skills. Its founders Jay Borquaye and Emmanuel (Nii) recognised that something needed to be done to support efforts by the government and civil society to keep children off the street. As such, the JayNii Streetwise project aims to keep children off the street and off the beach during school hours. Currently, they have enrolled 50 children between the ages of 4 to 16 into the Streetwise Project, located by the Jamestown lighthouse.
However, due to government construction works that took place and were later abandoned, the walls of the orphanage were demolished. This resulted in the orphanage and shelter for the children and carers becoming exposed to thieves and intruders. Such exposure was very dangerous and placed the children’s lives at risk!
JayNii were asked to reconstruct the walls themselves and whilst they sought funds for this, they managed to provide a temporary solution by using bamboo sticks, which helped to deter some intruders.
It was estimated that $5,000 was needed to rebuild the walls to cover the orphanage with bricks.They had reached out to many NGO’s to support them with funding but to no avail. It wasn’t until they connected with Change for Ghana that there were some results. After all, their aims are aligned with some of ours, so it made sense for us to support them with the completion of this project.
Change for Ghana visited the orphanage last month and donated $2,000 (£1,650) for the project which took two weeks to complete. The support from Change for Ghana has positively impacted the orphanage, as they feel safer and know that they are living in a better condition than before.
Taking part in this project has brought us so much joy and we hope to continue supporting organisations like this, whilst pushing through with our own initiatives this year.
(Source: JayNii)