Meet the Children of God

I'm spending a lot of time these days working with a really cool elementary school. The Children of God Community School provides kids in Accra’s Adenta neighbourhood with elementary education even if the parents can't afford to pay fees, with school supplies and uniforms, and a daily bowl of rice. The kids who attend CGCS are from poor families, and many of the seventy-odd students stuffed into the school's four small classrooms have already spent time living or working on the streets. If CGCS weren't there, its pretty likely that many of these students wouldn't have a chance to learn. 

Chilling by the water cooler.

Science class.

Camera! Did someone say camera!

Francis offers lunch in the unfinished part of the building.

Not enough desks or uniforms.

Three of the CGCS’s teacher’s are former street kids as well as the school’s founders. They're motivated by the idea that education combats poverty, and by a desire to keep kids off the street. Cujoe, Sule, and Ozzie, all in their late-twenties, taught school in a church, under a tree, and in an abandoned house before they raised enough money to rent land and put up a small school building. Because the school doesn’t make enough to pay them, these guys don’t have homes themselves: they sleep at the school on student benches that have been pushed together. These three guys are kind of my superheroes. 

from l: Ozzie, Sule, Cujoe

Sule & the little blue school that could.