Dear Friends,
I bring you the season’s greetings.
It has been 12 months of God’s goodness, and sustenance. For us in Challenging Heights, we reached our 20 years milestone, having been founded in 2005. This 20th year brought with it many reasons to celebrate, and to be thankful for. The many lives have been transformed because we lifted our voices, we stepped out, and we reached out to them. We count thousands of children rescued. Thousands of youths and women supported.
While we are grateful for God’s providence, we have also faced our own share of the challenges that come with standing up to be counted. Having our entire office ransacked in 2019, deprived us of data we had gathered over the course of 14 years, including information on entire generations of children, youth and women we have supported. The numerous death threats, smear campaigns, and blackmails are all challenges that we had to overcome. The challenges faced by our field operations team, especially our rescue team, have been enormous. We have been physically attacked a minimum of four times a year, with some of the attacks being brutal and fatal. The death of Kwesi Nkansah, as a result of our rescue operations in 2010 is the height of the price we have had to pay for standing up to injustice.
But we are strengthened by the sight of the impact we see in real-time. By a special partnership, we are now able to support several of our rescued children through high schools and universities, and the results coming out are impressive, with many of them gaining admissions into the universities. A few years ago, we supported a young lady through fashion. Today she has her own fashion training center, providing designer clothes to fashion lovers, and providing training to a minimum of 20 young girls every year. The stories of impact are unending.
So, we should have been able to let the whole world know that we were 20 years old. We were unable to celebrate because the 20th year itself came with its own challenges. But we take our 20th year as the summation of all the challenges we have faced in 20 years, and learn the lessons therein.
The Bible says that the testing of our faith builds strength, character, and maturity. It is upon this rock of faith that we hope to build our next 20 years. As an organization, there are so many things that we did well in the last 20 years, for which reason we see the impact. But there are a number of areas we could have done better in the last 20 years.
We want Challenging Heights to make an impact beyond the next 100 years, for its impact to outlive our lifetime. To achieve that, a lot would depend on the next 20 years. Therefore, we take all the lessons of the last 20 years in our strides, and pledge our determination to work harder, to become our better version.
After 20 years, I have come to a point where I have had to ask myself “What is God building in me through these productive but challenging 20 years?” There are several children still stacked in bondage who need liberation. There are thousands of women and men who were victims of slavery during their childhood, who could not liberate themselves, and who have now had children now stacked in forced labor and do not have any opportunity to go to school. There are women and children who starve to sleep. How many of these children, and women, would I impact in the next 20 years?
I know I have to be a better version of myself. Building impact is essential. But building the resources that would drive the impact is even more important, as resources are needed to drive the programs that would deliver the impact. I look forward to strengthening partnerships with our existing partners, by delivering more impacts, program effectiveness and efficiency. I seek to be more responsive, transparent and accountable to our partners. In addition, I seek to be more aggressive in attracting new partners and donors, for our collective impact.
I am eternally guided by the knowledge that Challenging Heights is a revolution. It is a movement. It is a mission. It is the burning inside that inspires our action. We are inspired by humanity. I live once, and I wish to be remembered by the mission, Challenging Heights.
We are grateful to all the partners that joined our first 20 years. We are grateful to all our current partners.
Join us, let’s walk the next 20 years together.
Merry Christmas.
James Kofi Annan
(Founder/President, Challenging Heights)