Basic and senior high education in Ghana is technically free. In practice, free rarely covers the uniform, the exercise books, the exam fees, the bus fare, or the food a child needs to concentrate in class. For a family already surviving day to day, those small costs are often the exact difference between a child staying in school and a child ending up on the street.

Menso Meka Ho Bi starts from a simple observation: you can’t lift a child out of poverty while leaving their parent stuck in it. So the project supports both at once. Children receive a full scholarship, fees, uniforms, books, feeding and healthcare included, while their parent or guardian, often a single mother, trains in a trade and receives what she needs to start a business of her own.

Since the project began, three cohorts and three years of families have gone through this together, more than thirty households moving from street connected vulnerability to something steadier: a stall, a shop, a trade, and a child who goes to school every single day without fail.

Now, with Cohort 4, we’re testing something new. Every family in this round receives three full years of support rather than one, because we’ve learned that a year simply isn’t long enough for a business, or a child’s education, to properly take root.