Happy Kids Foundation Brings Hope And Opportunity To Children Of Hohoe

213 km north-east of Ghana’s booming capital is the small, rural town of Hohoe. Perhaps best known for the Wli waterfalls, there is something else Hohoe is becoming known for – the Happy Kids Foundation. Happy Kids is an NGO, school and orphanage that educates and feeds 200 children and houses 50 vulnerable children on a daily basis. With an estimated 1 million orphans in Ghana, schools and orphanages are quite common.

What makes Happy Kids unique is their integrated approach to tackling the source of poverty , through engaging the surrounding community and children as core players in sustaining the foundation. At Happy Kids, child development encompasses nutrition, education, skill-based learning, love, empowerment and health care are core components – and they are unwavering in their commitment to uphold each core component on a consistent basis.

The root of Happy Kids is Elizabeth Gbone, a native resident of Hohoe. She created Happy Kids in 1995 as a response to the wide array of orphans and under privileged children in her home town – soon enough, Elizabeth found herself teaching 100 children under a single shed. Elizabeth continued to grow the organization, but faced challenges due to its isolation and limited resources. In 2010, Elizabeth partnered with an American named Kelsey Finnegan and together, they created a plan to sustain Happy Kids. In 2011, Happy Kids was formally registered as a local NGO in Ghana and has since made incredible progress.

Progress started with infrastructure that included dormitories, an internet café, school bathrooms and a school compound for grades nursery all the way through JHS. Every infrastructure project engaged the local community and was implemented with an empowering or income generating project to support the efforts (e.g: agriculture, nutrition and learning to sew for an income generating skill). Happy Kids started to incorporate programs for music, dance, and sports which empowered the children to explore their passions, creativity, self-expression and movement. They launched the first soccer league for vulnerable children in the Volta Region, which partnered and supported 8 other vulnerable children’s homes and schools in the region. In June, Happy Kids will launch the first girls’ soccer league as well. Still a grassroots organization, Happy Kids has also become a grassroots movement. Through this, it hopes to become a model that redefines the way children’s development and poverty alleviation is understood and addressed through rural communities in Ghana.

There is a novelty in the way their children are growing up, and yet growing up comes with new challenges. For the oldest children of Happy Kids, Secondary School is the next step and for their 50 in-house children, it is an expensive one. Without external family members to support each child’s continued education and the high cost of boarding, the foundation has now launched the Secondary School Scholarship Fund to support these kids. Continued education is the bridge for skilled employment that breaks the cycle of poverty, yet with less than 35%* of children in rural Ghana gaining access to Secondary School, Happy Kids is not alone in struggling to provide proper resources for their children to continue their education (* Education Policy and Data Center). To date, Happy Kids has successfully supported 9 children to go to Secondary School at some of the top Secondary schools in Ghana, and has a goal of providing secondary school tuition for all Happy Kids children who cannot afford this next critical step on their own.

Through these efforts, Happy Kids Foundation exemplifies a new approach to the traditional orphanage/school model in a way that creates real, impacting change. Happy Kids is currently seeking partnerships and support in Ghana to further build on these programs and continue to support the most vulnerable children in the Volta Region.

For more information, visit happykidsfund.org, email [email protected] , or call 233 50 845 0127 to speak with Godsway, a local Program Director of Happy Kids.

To learn more:
Happy Kids Foundation: http://happykidsfund.org
Video to Introduce Happy Kids: https://vimeo.com/192287931

Secondary School Fund: http://happykidsfund.org/project/secondary-school-scholarship-fund/