First Month Summary

First Month Summary for the Newsletter

The past month has been very busy for the Cheerful Hearts staff. As summer school finishes and official school begins, there is a lot to do in order to prepare for the upcoming year. Teaching classes, reviewing students’ progress, and updating sponsored children’s profiles have kept the office busy along with the numerous community outreach projects occurring in all three of the local fishing communities.

First, Cheerful Hearts would like to thank all of summer volunteers for their hard work and passion. Now that the summer is officially over, the office has become much quieter, but it was nice to work with such a dedicated team. All of their hard work is appreciated and will be continued as we begin the new year.

The children seem excited for school and many took advantage of the free vacation school classes that were run and staffed by Cheerful Hearts volunteers. Over the summer we had classes both in Nyanyano at Franklin Int as well as in Senya at Day Star International, both schools who teach our sponsored children. This year, we are sponsoring 57 children who are placed in various schools throughout the three fishing communities of Senya, Nyanyano, and Fetteh. All of these children were trafficked or were working in child labour and now have the opportunity to attend school free of charge. Cheerful Hearts also has a volunteer and former teacher working in Senya two days a week, both to educate the children as well as to monitor the work and progress of our sponsored students.

The Cheerful Hearts team is very excited about their new fundraising campaign that started at the beginning of September. The poultry farm project, which is directed at combating the poverty of Senya, has been over a year in the making. Finally, Cheerful Hearts is ready to start the fundraising and has launched the campaign online at Indiegogo.com. The campaign will last until the end of October and several people have already started donating. Please continue to support this project and share it with your friends.

Child labour talks have also resumed in the local schools. The first talk of the school year occurred in Nyanyano where over 80 children listened to and participated in the interactive discussion about child labour. With an updated curriculum, the talks focus on the difference between good work and bad work as well as the importance of education. Cheerful Hearts will continue to promote community education and outreach and will continue the talks with various schools in the fishing communities.

Along with the talks in local schools, the community volunteer project has also been continuing in Nyanyano. With two months left in the project, Cheerful Hearts staff sat down with our volunteers to see how their outreach was going. Even though local community outreach can be difficult, the volunteers were very excited about the impacts that they have made so far in their community. It is wonderful to see local Ghanaians take such pride in their community and being so dedicated to educating their neighbors on the issue of child labour.

Finally, Cheerful Hearts was extremely proud of the community movie event in Senya on August 27^th. There was a wonderful turnout for the presentation and discussion of a film created by the IOM and Challenging Heights about the problem of Child Trafficking in Ghana. The large audience of around 400 individuals was very interested in the information. While watching their faces during the film, it was apparent that the presentation made an impact on their views of Yeji and child labour. The discussion afterwards was also very powerful, especially due to several child speeches from our local sponsored children which were incredibly heartfelt and moving. Cheerful Hearts is so proud of the children who spoke and their testimonies to the importance of education had a deep effect on everyone in the audience.