About Us

Joe, Pretty and Ayingura having fun at Mama Laadi's Foster Home

The Daughters of AfriKids, a micro-finance co-operative, Sirigu

AfriKids is a Child Rights organisation working to improve life for Ghana’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged children

Our work ranges from the more traditional children’s projects including foster homes, schools and street child centres to more groundbreaking initiatives which tackle complex cultural issues including child trafficking, child labour and the spirit child phenomenon.

Rather than spreading our work across a continent or focusing on a single ‘headline’ issue, AfriKids has invested time and resources in making real and fundamental change to the society and economy of one region. By doing this AfriKids has uncovered the extraordinary passion and ability of the local people there and is achieving something unique; genuine sustainability.

As well financing and delivering sustainable child rights projects, AfriKids Ghana owns and runs a number of businesses including a medical centre, an eco-lodge and several ethical trade programmes.

The profit from these feed back into the organisation and within the next decade AfriKids Ghana will raise all of its funds this way. As well as driving jobs and money into the economy this income generation will give it complete independence from charitable handouts and western aid. When this happens AfriKids’ fundraising services in the UK will become redundant and the UK fundraising office will close down.

Watch 'An Introduction to AfriKids' (Google Video - opens in new window)

Why Northern Ghana?

Sirigu Local Compound

Everyone has their own perception of Africa. Too often, this perception is of a continent without hope; a lost cause ravaged by war, poverty, disease and famine. Most disheartening is the image of suffering and hardship as unchanging; it seems to everyone who takes an interest that there has been no progress or improvement since Africa's troubles became prominent over twenty years ago.

For many people, Africa exists only in outline; a single, dark shape that we all recognise, hanging desperately from the bottom of Europe. It stands for destitution, despair and catastrophe.

Little attention is given to the African nations as individual countries, with a series of individual problems- problems that are neither limitless nor insurmountable.Our challenge today is in bringing Africa into clearer focus; presenting it as it really is - 54 countries with their own landscapes, economies, populations, promises and issues. Meeting the challenge that Africa represents to the world, requires us to break it down into smaller elements that we can envisage more clearly, understand more easily and support more effectively.

Ghana is just 6 hours from London. We sit in the same time-zone and the same ocean. It is closer to us than New York. Yet Ghana struggles for support from us; it is in many ways a victim of its own achievements. Ghana is a stable constitutional democracy. Its elected government is taking every difficult step forward to secure the country's future. As the country quietly pursues improvement and development, media attention lights on its more volatile neighbours, where corruption and civil war are commonplace.

Yet it is in Ghana where a generation is growing up within reaching distance of their dream of self sufficiency, stability and sustainable development.

It is for this generation that AfriKids needs your support, especially now when they are so close to pulling themselves up from their reliance on economic assistance from outside. Right now, just as you read and learn about the promise the country holds, so do the next generation of Ghanaians. The story that you read with them is one of hope and optimism. AfriKids works with the local community in northern Ghana to nurture and support the children who are on the fringes of the country's development, providing food, shelter, education and medical relief where it is needed most.