My Story

In 2013, I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to my home country, Ghana for the second time. I was born in London and had never had the experience of visiting the country where my parents and relatives grew up. My visit was marred in mixed emotions as I loved meeting my extended family and enjoyed what was simply, a beautiful country.  I  also noticed how different America and England were in comparison to Ghana. I stayed in multiple cities in the capital city Accra, including East Legon and Tema. The place was beautiful, and I was enchanted by the culture, mesmerized by the food and blessed by the people who were so welcoming. But the other side of my experience that impacted my visit had to do with the number of children I saw trying to make a living during what was obviously school hours.

For the first time in my life, I witnessed street-hawkers. Street hawkers are people who come up to your car and try to sell you things while you are driving or stopped at an intersection or a red light. Mind you in Ghana temperatures reach up to 100 F on some days so it is not the easiest of things to be chasing cars to sell an item just to make a little money to provide sustenance. Additionally, I had the wonderful opportunity to take a couple of summer classes at a middle school during my stay.  During this summer school, I got to mingle with kids from fairly wealthy backgrounds who did not experience the life I saw on the outside of the school.  Maybe, they were used to seeing children in need that it no longer had any impact on them.  But I was determined to make some sort of a difference...though I did not know how. 

I returned to Atlanta after staying in Ghana for the entire summer for a life-changing trip. The experience and the emotion I felt during my trip kept marinating within me.  I knew I wanted to make a difference because in all honesty, I could easily have been one of those children.  I began to think through my desire, and find opportunities to give back to my community.  Every so often, my family and I take a trip to downtown Atlanta and feed the homeless because my parents believe in giving back to the community. It saddened my heart to see how many people were sleeping on the street and under bridges even in my home city Atlanta when temperatures here dip to the low 20's. We all find our calling and passion in different ways, and this is how I found mine.  This is how the story began, and the passion remains to make a child's life better - one child at a time.