Principles
- Equality: Globally, inequality between the Global North and Global South is still a fact. In our collaboration with Ghana, we work as equally as possible. This is sometimes difficult, because in the end, we decide what we do or don’t sponsor and where the money goes. Within certain frameworks of our other principles, we give the organizations as much freedom as possible. As the organization in Ghana develops, they can function more and more independently and thus gain more freedom.
- Small-scale: We work with local, small-scale organizations. Small-scale organizations that come from the community itself have close contact with the people; know what is going on, what is needed and what the local values and norms are.
- Demand-oriented work: We encourage organizations to work demand-oriented. By working in a demand-oriented manner, the initiatives have a bigger support base and more capacity. This ensures the initiatives to be effective and sustainable.
- Sustainability: We strengthen the organizations by helping them set up self-sustaining projects. This increases their self-reliance and therefore also their independence. We aim to ensure that the organizations can stand on their own two feet and that our support is temporary.
- Respect for all living things: The local culture (traditions, customs, norms and values) of the people are taken into account. However, international human rights and the international rights of the child go beyond this. In addition to human rights, we also find animal rights and the environment very important. We make green choices and encourage our partners to do so too.
Core activities
1. Support self-sustaining projects
We help organizations set up a small business to make food or products for their own use and/or sale. For example, a vegetable garden, a bakery, clothing, pottery or oil lamps.
2. Family-based care
We believe that a loving family is the best environment to grow up for a child’s development. We believe that poverty should not be a reason to place a child in a children’s home. When families receive financial support, they can continue to care for the children themselves. Children’s homes can be a preferably temporary shelter for children who lost both parents, are neglected or are in an unsafe situation at home.
We support children in vulnerable families with our child sponsor program. The money that Dutch sponsor parents donate is sent directly to families. This allows the parents to continue to care for the children themselves and allow them to go to school.
For more information, visit https://www.bettercarenetwork.org or read the booklet ‘Children without a home.’
We are currently discussing this with our other partner and are trying to get a better idea of the background of the children and the reason they live in the child care centre. We would like to support them to work more with family-based care.
3. Education and information
As humans, we can learn a lot from each other, with all our different backgrounds and experiences. In Ghana they have countless local and traditional crafts that lead to beautiful or tasty products. However, the internet is limited there, making it more difficult to gain knowledge about community work or sustainable agricultural techniques, for example.
As a foundation we contribute to education by:
- Financing educational resources and activities such as books, playful learning materials or a school uniform
- If possible, we finance local training courses that are in demand
- We make access to the internet easier
- We encourage the acquisition of knowledge
- We share the knowledge we gain from our partners Mondolokaal, de Wilde Ganzen, Better Care network, international social work or the internet