Challenging Heights’ Board has approved the most significant governance reform in the organisation’s twenty-year history. Over two days of deliberations in Accra, the Board approved a package that reconstitutes how the organisation is governed, supervised, and held to account.
What Changed
- New governance structure: The Advisory Board becomes the Board of Directors, with unambiguous supervisory and fiduciary authority. The Management Board becomes the Management Committee, responsible for operations and reporting to the Board.
- New leadership title: The organisation’s executive leadership role, previously President, becomes Executive Director.
- Succession planning is now on a constitutional footing, addressing a risk common to founder-led organisations, and one that funders and regulators increasingly expect to see managed rather than assumed.
- A strengthened safeguarding framework, alongside a comprehensive data protection framework grounded in Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843), with the highest level of restriction applied to the records of survivors of trafficking.
- Reformed procurement systems, with stronger documentation, competitive processes, and a clear audit trail.
- An independent ten-year impact evaluation covering 2016 to 2026. The evaluation will replicate the survey instruments used in the organisation’s 2016 study, in the same communities, so that change over the decade is measured rather than estimated. It will also extend into the destination communities on Lake Volta, the long-term outcomes of those rescued and reintegrated between 2015 and 2020, and the organisation’s own governance, financial, and safeguarding systems.
The Board of Directors
The Board of Directors is chaired by Professor Mavis Amo-Mensah. Other members are:
- Dr. Lawrencia Aggrey-Bluwey — Acting Treasurer
- Kenneth Mammudu
- Linda Ataa Osabutey
- James Kofi Annan — Executive Director and Secretary
Statements
Professor Mavis Amo-Mensah, Chair of the Board, said the reforms were designed to secure the organisation’s long-term durability:
“These reforms are about durability. Challenging Heights has done twenty years of difficult and important work, and the Board’s responsibility is to ensure that the institution is stronger than any individual within it.”
James Kofi Annan, Executive Director, said the changes reflect the organisation’s own standards being applied internally:
“Commissioning an evaluation whose findings I cannot edit, and submitting to a Board with clear authority over the executive, are not concessions. They are how we prove that what we say about children’s protection is matched by how we run ourselves.”
About Challenging Heights
Challenging Heights is a Ghana-based organisation working to end child trafficking, child labour, and the exploitation of children and vulnerable communities. Founded by James Kofi Annan, a survivor of child trafficking, the organisation has spent twenty years rescuing, rehabilitating, and reintegrating survivors, alongside prevention, education, and advocacy work across Ghana’s fishing, mining, and domestic work sectors. It operates recovery centres, vocational training programmes, and community-based initiatives in partnership with government agencies, international NGOs, and research institutions.
For more information, visit www.challengingheights.org/news.
