Education for Children

Education and the elimination of child labor are inextricably linked.  To make a sustainable impact on eliminating child labor as a whole or even to prevent children from being trafficked, it is necessary to address the educational needs of the poorest in the affected communities. Challenging Heights provides educational support for underserved and at-risk children, survivors and the most poor in the affected fishing and farming communities in Ghana, to enable the children recover from trauma and regain hope for their future. This project includes both regular and supplementary school programs, both in Challenging Heights’ own school and partner schools. Currently, Challenging Heights is supporting over 600 children in its partner schools, and over 700 boys and girls in its own school.

 

Empower Communities

Challenging Heights understands that addressing the problem of child trafficking through investigative rescues and prosecutions is one good way of addressing the problem. However, doing this alone ignores the root causes, and tends to become less sustainable.

Therefore, in addition to rescues and prosecution, CH work innovatively with partners to dismantle the systems that allow slavery to flourish, putting community members, survivors of slavery and their families as partners at the frontlines of creating new systems to help survivors and the vulnerable continue to live in freedom. This also includes formal school and human rights education for all stakeholders to become frontline defenders of the rights of children susceptible to slavery. We empower these three partners (community members, survivors, and affected families) to use their experiences to become peer educators and agents of transformative social change, and this has resulted in forming Community Child Protection Committees to protect children from slavery, and to work with stakeholders to provide protective services for at-risk children.

Challenging Heights and its partners strengthens their impacts through the creation of public awareness, alternative income opportunities for families, and continued survivor rehabilitation and recovery programs, including providing counselling, basic literacy, health care and human rights education at our rehabilitation centers.

By offering local families small business management training and access to financial credit facilities, our actions have shown to help root out parents’ attraction to slavery by keeping vulnerable children safe and protected.

 

We educate the fishing communities to re-think their labour practices, by sharing with them best practices and alternative fishing methods that would root out child labour.

These approaches to our work are assessed continuously for improvement, and have ensured that every member of society is actively involved in taking ownership in protecting their community’s children.

 

Protect Survivors

 

The Challenging Heights rehabilitation center is the first point of refuge for rescued children, offering a transitional home for holistic rehabilitation, survivor support, aftercare, and love!

 

Challenging Heights undertakes investigative rescues as one way of protecting affected children. In addition, we work with communities to help survivors and the vulnerable continue to live in freedom. This also includes formal school and human rights education for affected children and their families, to become frontline defenders of the rights of children susceptible to slavery. We empower families and their children to use their experiences to become peer educators.

 

Challenging Heights facilitates the formation of Community Child Protection Committees (CCPCs), and these committees are empowered to serve as vanguards for children in their communities.