Accra, Ghana, Jul 29, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- Salamatu Abubakar spent years of her childhood picking up scraps of plastic on the streets of Accra, the African coastal city that is the capital of Ghana. Her dad took the plastic to an open air market, selling it in bulk to recyclers and scrap dealers, and barely earning enough to get by.
In that same market, Samuel Ganyo, who had come with his mother to Accra from a poorer city in Ghana, sold slices of sugar cane to marketplace vendors, shoppers, and people passing by in cars. A popular snack across Africa, sugar cane didn’t pay enough for Samuel and his mother.
Daniel Lomotey started working in another Accra market when he was 10. He dropped out of school then, and started working for his uncle pushing a handcart hired by vendors to move their products in the Mandela marketplace. It was hard work, and it didn’t pay very much. And because Daniel, like Salamatua and Samuel, wasn’t going to school, his prospects for the future looked grim.
When Daniel was 12, he met Sister Anthonia Orji of the Daughters of Sacred Passion, a Nigerian religious sister working in Ghana. Sr. Anthonia helped kids do hard, heavy work on the streets, and helped them get back to school.
Sr. Anthonia is the centre manager and education officer at the Welfare, Empowerment Mobility Centre in the Archdiocese of Accra. Her work is part of the Rays of Hope project, which aims to help Ghana’s street kids, like Salamatua, Samuel, and Daniel, by giving them a home, and getting them enrolled in school.
Daniel is 18 now. He met Sr. Anthonia in 2014. And he told ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner, that meeting her is the best thing to happen in his life.
“Through her guidance and support, I am now a final year Junior High student at the St. Peter’s Catholic School in Ayikuma. Apart from that, I have acquired the skills in sewing and barbering through training at WEM,” Daniel said.
Samuel, who is 16, also lives at the center, along with 22 other young people.
“I have learnt a lot like farming and barbering of hair as an additional skill to my schooling and I advise all vulnerable children who have the opportunity like me to make good use of it,” said Samuel.
The center doesn’t discriminate based upon religion. Though a Muslim, Salamatu said she has come to love Catholicism, through the guidance of Sr. Anthonia, whom she said is her mentor and mother.
“I picked polythene on the streets for my dad to sell in the Ashaiman market to earn a living. But thanks to Rays of Hope, I now live a life of dignity,” she told ACI Africa, adding, “Through the skills training and way of life at the center, I can pray the rosary and other Catholic prayers very well even though I am a Muslim.”
Ghana’s constitution prohibits many types of child labor. But Sr. Anthonia told ACI Africa that the constitutional law is not always followed, and that many poor children are put to work because of the poverty of their families.
Sr. Anthonia lamented school drop-out, child mortality, child labor, child trafficking, rape, prostitution and defilement of vulnerable children and urged Ghanaians to create a sense of belonging in street children.
She said that with the outbreak of COVID-19, the children ranging between the ages of 7 and 15 in residence at the WEM Center have been placed in various homes.
All the children, she said, were schooling at the St. Peter’s Catholic School.
“For the fear of the spread of the coronavirus at the WEM Center, 20 out of the 23 children have been placed in various homes of volunteer families and they are monitored daily by our re-integration staff,” Sr. Anthonia told ACI Africa.
The main aim of the center is to help Ghana’s street children get to school, and stay healthy, while staying connected with the parents and extended families of the children. The religious sister said that a lot of effort goes into establishing a frequent contact between the street survivors and their families.
“We believe that what God has created and bound together should not be separated. The connection to one’s family is the most valuable foundation for becoming a successful and responsible member of society. Therefore, we are convinced of putting all our effort, patience and love into the reintegration process of our beneficiaries,” she said.
Sr. Anthonia said that Christians have been endowed with the ability to perceive, appreciate and understand the situation of the vulnerable person, identify their needs, design needed services and facilitate the provision of requisite intervention to bring relief to them.
She appealed to parents and opinion leaders to jointly take steps to curb drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, teenage pregnancies, armed robbery, occultism and cyber fraud among the youth, especially those on the streets.
The work of her project, she said, begins with finding street children eager to go to school, and families willing to approve that.
“We search the streets of Ashaiman, Tema, Accra and its environs from the First Contact Place. Every year, we search for street children in the major cities in Greater Accra and those who are willing to be supported, along with their families, sign a contract for onward enrollment every September,” she told ACI Africa correspondent.
She explained that the center’s educational approach is divided into pre-school classes, formal education and informal education as well as moral and religious aspects of life.
“Pre-school” isn’t for younger kids, as the term denotes in the West. At WEM, all new recruits are prepared for school life through intensive one-year pre-school classes.
“The children who were once on the streets and not schooling will have to be prepared to enhance their reintegration into school life,” the nun said, and added, “This demands patience, energy and love.”
“In pre-school classes, we focus to improve their oral, literary and arithmetic skills through a structured curriculum, and in the later stage of their development in pre-classes, other subject areas are introduced.”
There are 36 children at the collection center who are being prepared for school life. The collection point, in extreme cases, serves as a temporary shelter for beneficiaries, whose relatives or parents have not yet been located.
The Nigerian nun explained that at the collection center, the beneficiaries come on a daily basis to be taught mathematics, english and other subjects by the class teachers and volunteers.
“They are also educated on personal hygiene, social, religious and moral skills through classes and special programs,” she added, and explained that the children have a period of morning devotion after their chores, before they go into their classes for lessons.
The classes, she said, are divided into three levels to meet the children’s individual academic needs, as they undertake five hours of classes per day.
When they complete the one-year pre-class, they are enrolled into basic school after they have met the criteria, which include punctuality and discipline, ability to read and write, to calculate simple arithmetic, personal hygiene like bathing, washing, and neatness in dress, Sr. Anthonia said.
The children are admitted into Catholic schools because “we believe the environment and as well as the Christian routine will help grow their moral and religious values,” said Sr. Anthonia.
As part of its humanitarian activities, Rays of Hope sponsors the former vulnerable children from the basic to the tertiary level of education, providing shelter, food, accommodation, and school fees.
Sr. Anthonia said that passion to restore dignity among young people who have made mistakes in life inspires her apostolate.
“The work at Rays of Hope for me is not just work but rather it is a ministry and a call. Ordinarily, when you look at it with human eyes, you might not want anything to do with it,” she said.
“It is all about a call from God and a passion to make an impact in the young people’s lives.”
A version of this story was first published by ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner. It has been adapted by CNA.
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A disaster, and a disgrace for the West. The conservatives about to take control in Washington are, if anything, worse than Biden on this issue of protecting Christians and our Christian sacred sites in the Middle East. Compare Trump’s callous disregard for these our true interests with his brutal support for the ethnic cleansing and imperialist expansionism of Tel Aviv. The West has nothing to say. And Trump’s priorities for the U.S.? Deport Catholics by the million and replace them with Hindus and Sikhs. The West has nothing to say.
Rubbish.
Israel is the reason we can visit Christian Holy Land shrines in the first place. How likely might that be under a caliphate and how many would still be standing?
God bless Israel and may He protect and guide Donald Trump. 🙏
Well said, Mrscracker. You are very correct. Thank you.
Wow, the pure garbage about “ethnic cleansing and imperialist expansionism” pretty much tells us anything you have to say is worthless.
You did hear about the muslim attacks on civilians, women and babies on October 7th, didnt you? Muslim countries 20 times the size of Israel surround them so how you assert the Jews are imperialists is totally delusional.
There’s no excuse to so clueless in the year 2025.
The propaganda horror stories about October 27th have been debunked many times.
Very easily. They have been colonising the lands occupied since 1967, which even the United States recognises are integral parts of other countries. This colonising involves the expulsion of those not assimilable: ethnic cleansing of Christians (as well as Muslims), just like that occurring in Europe so many times. Nineteenth-century European nationalism is the model for this stuff.
Christians have been leaving the Holy Land in droves under Tel Aviv’s rule. They had put up with centuries of Muslim rule (a quarter of the Middle East’s population was still Christian in 1918), but the last couple of generations of Tel Aviv domination has been the last straw. Bethlehem in 1947: majority Christian. Bethlehem today: 5% Christian. A disaster for our interests. Priests living in Jerusalem get spat on every day (not by Muslims), and Israeli police look the other way. What a wonderful place.
Israel is indeed a wonderful place and the great majority of Israelis are just as disgusted by the actions of an extreme splinter group as we are by the actions of the Westminister Baptists.
I have a family member who visited Israel last year and trust me, if you walk through the wrong ultra orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem on the Sabbath you don’t have to be a member of the Catholic clergy or even a non Jew to have shoes hurled at you. Most Israelis find that extremely obnoxious behavior.
You are right Miguel, but you know is not easy.
Going back to the past no longer make sense. The october 7th seems, without doubt, induced zionist government did by desesperated mad (the 50,000 dead in gaza a truth induced by the genocide zionist government. Among them many Christians. But Muslims don’t make it easy if they don’t soften their positions).
How about a Jerusalem open to all three religions? It cannot be other thing, not belonging to any one. Remember, whoever holds the crown of Spain, holds the crown of Jerusalem. Catholic. Friend of all. Never with extremists. Two states solution now! or freedom and justice for arabs in Israel, in any case end or askenazi apartheid!
There are no conservatives in Washington, and nobody is going to risk their career to protect Christians.
True. No brave christians. I don’t know why the Western (USA and Europe) elites don’t defend the descendants of Jesus friends, Apostles, that are the Catholic Palestinians… Maybe because what you say.
My guess, Miguel is a a leftist plant who enjoys spewing ridiculous comments. Frankly it is sad, but that is the world we live in.
Regarding Christians in Syria, we in need to pray them, for both their physical protection and spiritual courage.
Rubbish guess ad rubbish if no guess.
The facts are undeniable and the “October 7” missive doesn’t straighten out anything.
Very well put LJ. Thank you.
Correction: The 2003 invasion was only a “coalition of the willing” and was not the occasion of a 15-0 U.N. vote, probably a later vote to lift sanctions. I am mistaken.
Somewhere on CWR a reader repeated that the second Iraq war was patently unjust, and opined that the new regime in Syria is simply biding its time before persecuting the Christians. Hussein was said to tolerate Christians. To which, my earlier comment somewhere, as here corrected:
Yours truly does not know enough to conclude whether or not “this new regime in Syria is biding its time to eradicate the remnants of Syrian Christianity,” nor whether we should revere Iraq’s Hussein because he tolerated/protected Christians—while also eradicating 182,000 Kurds and deporting even more, including the use of weapons of mass destruction (the 1988 Halabja attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre).
Three points and a Question:
FIRST, as an amateur from the back bleachers, my focus often turns too much on apparent details that, as possible pivot points, tend to get lost in later hindsight. “For want of a nail a shoe was lost, etc.” Example: a few altered details in Muhammad’s personal life in the 7th Century, and sectarian Islam in the 21st-century Middle East, would not even exist. Nor would ISIS.
SECOND, following are a few nails and horseshoes…
My recollection from sparse news accounts at the time are that the Iraqi scientific community had destroyed the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because they feared Western actions, but they also feared to inform Hussein whose recent history and uninformed bluster seemed to confirm the continued existence of WMD. A commitment by a “coalition of the willing” that was discounted by Hussein because of probably a dozen earlier U.N. proclamations that were followed by inaction. And, later that a key Iraqi informant, claiming the WMDs existed, was simply gaming the United States into supporting his side in local an regional intersectarian strife. And, that the overall strategy to invade Iraq was designed to conclude quickly—to prevent intersectarian eruptions and what eventually became ISIS….But, the strategy was crippled by removal of the northern half of the pincer attack, by President Erdogan who only a week before the invasion withdrew his permission to cross through Turkish airspace (internal Muslim/sectarian politics?).
THIRD, in retrospect we see an unjust “preventive war,” rather than what might have been (yes, no, maybe?) a more defensible but deceived and overly complex “first strike”. The horror of it all, especially for little people in huge numbers who are always the collateral damage to the Law of Unforeseen Consequences.
The Honore de Balzac got it just about right, “bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.” Likewise, the compact, technocratic, tripwire, and modern geopolitical world. Missing is sound prudential judgment (a principle of the Catholic Social Teaching) which can be a bit less certain in practice than quoting the Gospel as policy.
QUESTION: As has been said, “while one does have the right to offer non-resistance to the knife, one does not have the right to offer the necks of one’s family and others to the assailant.” With imperfect information and in an imperfect world, how are overly-weaponized nations to navigate better between moral absolutes, and the calculus of consequences for their actions and for their inactions, both?
ISIS/ISIL/Al Sham -promise to conquer Rome. By some arrangement they went and got a sort of national legitimization in Syria. Who did that?
‘ Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.)
We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. … There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.
And …..
And …..
And ….. ‘
See the CWR report by Carl Olson.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2015/02/17/the-atlantic-magazine-isis-is-very-islamic-apocalyptic-and-avowedly-genocidal/
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/15/isis-beheads-21-christians-promises-to-conquer-rome-by-allahs-permission/