Youth Alive Ghana
Youth Alive Ghana, formerly called the Tamale Street Children’s Project, was an ActionAid Ghana (AAG) initiative. The Tamale Street Children’s Project was established in 1995 by AAG with the aim to offering street children a second chance at normal growth and development. The project was designed, at its inception, to develop into a local NGO autonomous of ActionAid in the near future. Consequently, after six years of operation as an Action Aid project, the project finally registered as an autonomous local NGO in January 2002, under the name Youth Alive.
Youth Alive, as an organisation, now works with street and vulnerable children/youth in the poorest part of Ghana, i.e. the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions. Available statistics indicate that 9, 8 and 7 out of every ten people are below the poverty line in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions respectively.
Youth Alive's working definition of a street child is any child who spends majority of his/her time outside the home (on the street) engaging in economic activities for his/her survival. The charity's vision is of a Ghana without street children, where every child can live a life of dignity and self-worth.
Currently Youth Alive is supporting over 400 street and vulnerable children in school at various levels including university, training college, senior high school, junior high school, and primary school. Additionally they are supporting close to 200 street youth (mostly teenagers 15–19 years) to learn trades of their choice, e.g. carpentry, auto fitting, welding, straightening & spraying, dressmaking, hairdressing, local cloth (northern kente) weaving, sign writing, electrical engineering, etc.
The website for Youth Alive Ghana is hosted and maintained by David Pain in Oslo. David lives in Oslo with his 3 children and wife Bodil Anshus. Bodil is a children's writer and is known for her work relating to the character of 'Sluffen'. She writes a blog about Sluffen, see site below for details. Bodil hopes to use the blog to help highlight street children around the world.