A chance to grow – Green Gold Social Enterprise

Drive Aid Ghana Education Project provides basic reading and writing skills to 362 children between 2 -16 years, in an after school program in 5 rural poor communities. Among these children include 61 orphans, our aim is to support these children grow out of the circle of poverty by giving them a second chance to learn. Most of these children are school dropouts, others are in school but lack the ability to read and write due to the poor conditions in the rural areas and the ever present problems in the Ghanaian educational system – the ability to make learning practical for their understanding.

The education project is empowering children in poor rural communities by making reading and writing enjoyable and free. The learning times after school are flexible, meaning classes are being held between 3 pm – 5 pm which allows them to help their families even after they have attended our classes. It also means the times are within the “acceptable” time the children are allowed to play in the community. By combining playing and learning, we are not only teaching them basic learning skills but make it a great place to develop socially and independently (something they don’t easily get within their communities) it is also a great way to extend a hand of love to the abused and broken hearted and show them that someone cares.
Averagely, most of these children in the rural communities are sent to farm after school or sent to do labour work to help support their families. Majority of these children have only one or two meals a day, which mostly contains carbohydrates. This also causes a high degree of malnourishment and affects their learning ability. Drive Aid is seeking to fight malnutrition as well as hunger, these two problems combined causes “stunting” in most African children, stunting not only in their physical development but also intellectually – which explains why most of these African children in rural communities are not able to make it to higher level of education and break out of the cycle of poverty.
We have a vast land to develop our sustainable approach to these problems through farming.
Moringa is a great source of vitamins and minerals to help eradicate malnutrition, but Moringa alone cannot feed these children every day. We are implementing cross culture farming in all our Moringa farms by introducing the production of other crops such as Yam, Maize, Beans, Tomatoes, Paper, groundnut and okra in a rotation and seasonal basis. The benefit of producing such a system is that whiles we are able to grow Moringa for its short term benefits (as food for the children) and long term benefits (production of oil and powder) we can integrate these other crops which will achieve the following benefits:
1. Provide feeding for the children in the after school program.
2. Excess food is sold to purchase educational materials to sustain the educational project.
3. Excess food is sold to support students who graduate from our education projects and want to further in their studies in a formal school or get higher/vocational training.
4. Students who do not or cannot afford to go higher or are unemployed can help on the farm to sustain and support themselves.
5. For students who want to produce their own farms, we can support with startup capital/seedlings and eliminate the cost of buying seedling on their own.
Our desire is to make Drive Aid Ghana projects sustainable and have a longer impact without dependence on external donations. Your contribution now will help us achieve this goal