Child Slavery on Lake Volta

A couple of months ago a woman named Pam Cope contacted me. She had heard about my experiences in Ghana last year and my plan to return and bring the gift of clean water to a school of children. She also feels connected to the children of Ghana, but her cause is far scarier than mine. She learned about the child trafficking and indentured servitude of thousands of children on Lake Volta (in the Volta Region in Eastern Ghana). Many of these kids were sold by their parents and relatives to lake masters who exploit them and use them as extremely cheap labor in the thriving fishing industry here in Ghana. Children as young as five are sold into this slavery, working on canoes, detangling nets and other dangerous tasks below the surface of the lake’s cloudy water. Many do not return to the surface, disappearing forever. They are also beaten severely and starved of basic human necessities, such as food, sleep, proper hygiene and education. Pam Copes organization, Touch of Life Foundation saves these children and takes some of them to this home, The Freedom Center, where they get the opportunity to experience freedom and real childhood. They not only offer them a home to stay in, but a chance to catch up on education that they missed out on, while on the lake. Because many of these children were sold by their parents, it is incomprehensible to think of returning them to their families, at the risk of being sold again. Touch of Life continues to raise money to save these children and provide them with a new chance at a normal life. To read more and/or to donate, check out their website- http://www.touchalifekids.org. After learning of this organization, I wanted to help in whatever way I could, and offered to take portraits of the children they had saved. Some of these are posted here.

~ by nborowick on May 20, 2009.