Local charity funds education project in Ghana

GHA staff nurse Louise Barea has embarked on an extension of her HelpmelearnAfrica project, which has already seen some success in the creation of a school in a remote region of Ghana.

The local volunteer worker will be restarting with her fundraising events as from today, having arrived back in Gibraltar last week. She aims to collect some £21,000 to build a library for the school.

Her work in Ghana, which started some five years back, has seen her register a charity. She now embarks on creating more facilities for children after her initial success led to the creation the Maranatha school, now catering for 370 children.

The project had initially started with building two classrooms. But it proved so successful that pupil numbers rose from 150 to 370 children even before more classrooms were built.

The project attracted attention from organisations such as Bassadone, who assisted in funding the roof, and the Gibraltar Football Association, who assisted with football kits, as well as attracting wide social media popularity locally.

The children who lacked resources were recently supplied with Gibraltar national team kits, allowing the school to now enter regional leagues for the first time.

“Like everyone knows, football is huge in Africa, they don’t

have tv they don’t have money, they don’t have anything at all. What they have is a football. So after school, before school, any time they can, all they are doing is playing football,” Louise Barea said, explaining how a simple thing like football kits had changed things for the children at the school.

See feature on pages 12 and 13 of our print or e-editions.