Mo is an amazing 10 year old boy from northern Ghana, a remote part of the country that is vastly less developed than the South. He lives with his parents, who are subsistence farmers and his 7 siblings.
For so many children in this region of the country, education simply isn’t an option because families can’t afford the uniform and school books required to attend school. From the age of 5, Mo would go and work on the farm with his parents for up to 12 hours a day in 40 degree heat.
Child labour is still a huge problem facing children in northern Ghana, and one of the biggest barriers to education. This regularly leads to children never going to school and getting sucked into a life of poverty.
When Mo heard about a new Hope for Children education project in the neighbouring village, he was overjoyed to learn that we had established a bike bank in his village so that children didn’t have to walk for miles in the morning heat to get to school.
Mo was also given a uniform and the school books he needed to attend school. “On my first day of school I was very shy and scared because I didn’t know what school would be like.”
But since then, Mo hasn’t looked back. As well as excelling in class, he was also elected by his classmates as the President of a children’s club, which teaches children about their rights and also the dangers of issues like child labour.
These clubs also act as a forum for children to learn how to advocate and lobby local government, and recently one successfully had a new school building funded.
When he grows up, Mo wants to become a doctor because although there is a hospital in the local township, none of the staff speak his tribe’s local dialect so very few of his community can access the healthcare that is there. Mo knows that by studying hard, he can transform the future of his family, and his community.
