15 years of the Kids in Ghana
After 15 years Diana Austin says the Kids in Ghana project has met most of its goals
January 6, 2025, 1:32 pm
Ashley Bochek
Dr. Diana Austin of Moosomin has spent the past 15 years helping children in Ghana, providing financial support through her Kids in Ghana project.
The program was set up to help provide a safe home and education to four young children who were forced out of fostering services in Ghana in 2009.
The interview with Diana follows:
Tell me a bit about yourself and how you first made a connection with Ghana.
I grew up in Moosomin and after high school, I went to Ghana on a six-month volunteer exchange program. I didn’t really have any connection to Ghana before hand, but I wanted to go and volunteer. My aunt and family had been involved in a project when I was younger that had exposed me to this kind of stuff so right after high school I went to Ghana for six months in 2004, and I volunteered at Ashan. It was a good experience, but the hard part about it is that you come for six months as a volunteer and get a lot more out of the project you are working on. As a volunteer I think the experience in a way is more impactful. I wanted to translate that into a longer term thing, and then made the commitment once I was done my undergrad degree that I would come back. Then in 2009, after university I went back to Ghana for six months.
During that time the government had made some changes in requiring all children’s homes and orphanages in the country to reduce the number of children in care. It was mostly the older ones who were going to be sent away. The way the system works is, for some children, both of their parents are deceased and they need care, but sometimes it is more of a foster program so their parents have time to get things together and create more stable situations to take them back when they have no family or friends to go to, but there were four kids, Antwi, Emmanuel, Victoria, and Agyenim, who didn’t have safe and good homes to return to.
I had brought some money for a project to build a babies ward, but while I was there I realized it didn’t seem as far ahead as I thought it was so I pulled back from that project. We decided that we had enough money then to support these four children for a year and we called it ‘4 Kids in Ghana.’ Now, it has been 15 years we’ve been supporting those kids.
How did the Kids in Ghana program change over the years?
When I went, I was on a referral. I had been accepted into Med School, but I was in Ghana and then I wanted to finish the project I was doing before coming home. All of this was falling into place near the end of my trip, so initially we had to figure out a place for them to stay and there was a nearby village—you can walk to it—which is where Ashan Children’s Home was. The Ashan Children’s Home was on the outskirts of Kumasi and Kumasi is the second biggest city in Ghana.
In a nearby village there was a group of Americans who had a program and had a group of kids they were fostering and providing with a safe place to live, and education. I had contacted them to see if it was possible that they might be able to take on these four children. I had said I would provide financially for them, but just so they had a guardianship that was there in their country and they said ‘Yes, that is fine.’ It went okay, there was a different philosophy at their fostering place than ours, but overall the biggest thing was they had a safe place to stay.
A year into it, the day care was relocating to the coast and I didn’t want to move the kids because even though they were no longer at Ashan, they were still close to the area they grew up in and knew. Relocating would take them away from a lifeline of connections and the cook that had worked with them, she was staying, her name was Vida. She offered to stay and look after the kids.
We initially had them renting a house and then that fell through and there was a period that was quite sketchy and they were staying in this abandoned house while we were trying to sort something else out. Then, we ended up buying a house for them there. That was a big relief once we had that stabilized. For 22 years, Vida was their guardian and then they had a house over the years we have renovated.
Antwi was the oldest. He started high school when the project started and then after that he got a scholarship to a private school in Accra to study Human Resources and the others continued to finish their education. In 2010 Victoria had her son, Oliver, which was unplanned, and she took a little bit of a break from her studies, but then because we decided to support her through it, we renamed the project to the ‘Kids in Ghana Project.’
Then, when Antwi was finished his Human Resource diploma he did the National Service which is a mandatory year after you finish post-secondary in Ghana. Then, he had wanted to come to Canada, to the University of Regina, and he was accepted, but then he was rejected twice for his visa application.
We initially had charitable status for Kids in Ghana through St. Mary’s Parish, that is how we raised money to start the program, but in 2011 Canada changed the way the donations could be made and to whom, but a lot of people who had initially started supporting the program continued throughout even when they weren’t getting that kind of thank you back. Around the same time, we were trying to get Antwi to go to Regina, we were also trying to reapply to the CRA to see if we could get charitable status for our program, so we eventually learned that since the program was supporting individuals, CRA doesn’t accept that to be charitable status—you can’t support individuals. So we lost our charitable status.
Emmanuel, the second oldest, finished high school and went on to study at the University of Ghana where he did Education and Social Work and then he did his National Service. Victoria took a nursing diploma after high school, similar to a LPN program, and then after that she upgraded her math so she could apply to university. So she did a Bachelor of Science in Family Studies and she just completed that in August. Now, she is doing her National Service.
Then, the youngest sibling Agyenim completed his secondary education and did some different labour jobs. As they all finished their schooling and National Service, we then had a period of time to realize at what point was the support helpful or a hindrance because we kind of saw that need to support yourself is a big drive forward, so we began to realize that we needed to pull back a bit.
When Antwi and Emmanuel finished their National Service, it was time for them to go out and look for work. We helped support Emmanuel after, since he was kind of on his own for a bit and wanted to get his drivers license—helping with smaller projects, but they were no longer getting any allowance or money for food like they were getting when they were in school. Now that Victoria is going to be done, and there is still Oliver left, we will continue to support Oliver, but I think I have got to the point where they are growing up now and realizing the time was ready for them to continue on their own.
We’re also in the process of seeing if we can get Victoria here with a visa to help with child care through a child-caregiver program. I think in a way they would all love to come to Canada because even with education in Ghana, life is still very hard there. It is very hard to get ahead, but at the same time we can’t bring them all here, so we need to have a plan. We are hopeful that maybe it will work for Victoria and then if she comes she may be eventually be able to bring Oliver over as well.
What have you learned through this process?
I have learned a lot. It was interesting because when we were going through the whole CRA thing it seemed a little unfair—you should be able to support individuals because in a way sometimes you can be a large scale charitable organization, the effect is so diluted over so many people, does it actually make a huge difference?
We definitely in these five individuals have absolutely changed the trajectory of their life, but it also puts a lot of pressure on the individuals. I have definitely made fumbles along the way and I sometimes think they had to do a lot on their own, when they were with Vida and transitioning and then there was so much stuff that wasn’t ideal or how I would have liked to have laid it out because it wasn’t really a thought-out plan. It was really just a reaction and response to what was happening.
I have learned a lot about how people here do care about other individuals. People cared and were invested and that helped them transition rather than giving to them something that doesn’t have a name. Kevin and the World-Spectator have been amazing at always helping support and getting the word out. It has been very heartwarming to see the response from the community.
In retrospect, how does it make you feel looking back and seeing what you did and how far the project has come?It is interesting. After I shared my last newsletter I heard from a lot of people—I wasn’t even sure if they read the newsletter, but they sent an email congratulating us on all the work we have done and it feels good.
It would be nice if life was easier for them all now, but then again they are in better situations than they would be. I just know they still have a lot of struggles ahead and the hard part is the more you work within development work you realize the problems are really big and providing education for a limited time doesn’t change that bigger picture.
I think sometimes I feel discouraged by that and wonder, ‘Have we accomplished anything?’ and then I look at it from more of an optimistic point of view and realize they now are in positions they wouldn’t have been otherwise, and it is nice to see it at a point now where I can step back a little bit and let them go for it and stand on their own two feet.
You said you are working on getting Victoria over to Canada, is that what is next for the program or is there more you still wish to see with the kids?
It hasn’t really changed dramatically aside from stopping asking people for ongoing support, but we haven’t been providing financial support to Antwi and Emmanuel for a while. Now, we are trying to help Agyenim get some travel experience and life experience, we have helped him come here twice the last few summers to help him with that experience he can use when he is on his own.
We’re hoping Victoria can get a visa to come and then we are going to continue to support Oliver. We aren’t necessarily ending the project, but it will have a different way of operating.
It will be interesting if I do share any updates next year, I am not sure, but the transition into not having a program, I am not entirely sure what it will look like, but we will be pulling back a little bit with those expectations for them, as well as our expectations for our donors and sponsors who have been part of the program.
How different are you as a person because of this program?
I am such a different person from when I started. I was a lot more naive, I had rose-coloured glasses, and I don’t think I necessarily believed I could change the world, but I think I have this optimism of ‘if there is a will, there is a way,’ and you have to respond.
I was potentially less pragmatic in my youth.
The irony is a lot of times people would think this will make me a better person, but perhaps maybe what it actually made me is a bit more realistic and pragmatic—I see now development work comes with a lot of work and challenges to keep going.
I now realize everything that is entailed with projects like The Kids in Ghana Project. Tweet
