Self-sufficiency and sustainability in a variable environment.
Wepia God's Love Foundation works with widows, orphans and needy children in northern Ghana — training women to make soap and press plant oils, putting a warm lunch in front of a child at school, and lending the small sums that let a household trade its way out of a hungry season.
Where that has reached
What we do
The foundation is not a grant-making body. Its people live in the districts they work in, and the work is the same work repeated until it holds.
Building and strengthening female community-based organisations so that a group can act, hold funds and negotiate as one.
The patient part: keeping a group together between seasons, and keeping the work going when the first enthusiasm has passed.
Supporting access to primary care for households that would otherwise weigh the cost of a clinic visit against a meal.
Promotion of safe hygiene behaviour in households and schools, in a region where open defecation is still common and the disease burden follows from it.
Raising awareness of the issues that keep women out of decisions, and running the financial literacy that has to come before a loan does.
Training in organic soap making and in extracting and processing plant oils — baobab, moringa, neem and carrot — alongside micro loans and direct supply of food, school lunches, uniforms and educational materials.
“A warm meal a day and a decent shelter, water source and a place of convenience means a lot.”
From the foundation's background paper
Recent work
Each one says where it happened and who it reached.
A complementary feeding project at the community primary school, putting a warm meal in front of children during the school day.
Complementary feeding across three deprived communities, aimed at the months when a household's own stores have run down.
Training women to make organic soap and to extract and process baobab, moringa, neem and carrot oils — a trade that can be carried on at home and sold locally.
The foundation's funding has come from friends in the diaspora and from philanthropic individuals and organisations. As the climate and the economy have pressed harder on the rural north, the number of households needing help has grown while that support has receded.
