IBM Corporate Services Corps, Ghana: Visit to SOS Village and Frafraha Children's Homes

The team wanted the chance to work with some of the local orphanages and foster care centers during our weekends. We visited two orphanages, the SOS children's village www.sosghana.org, and the Frafraha foster home http://www.facebook.com/pages/frafraha-foster-home/116385368464054.

We first went to SOS children's home which is an independent, non-governmental and social development organization, which has been active in the field of children's needs, concerns and rights since 1949. Its activities focus on neglected and abandoned children and orphans, as well as disadvantaged families. There are 10 houses on the SOS campus we attended, and each house has a house mother and an "aunt", who lives and takes care of the children. There are about 8 children per home and the children range from newborns to 18. SOS has an on campus school all the way through high school. They continue to work with the children until they are about 21 or older if they are not yet deemed "independent". It was a wonderful campus and the children seemed very happy. They were so happy to see the IBM team and were very curious about our countries.

We visited Frafraha about a week after SOS and it was a different atmosphere. The children seemed happy as well, but it was apparent that they did not have the same resources as they have at SOS. Frafraha is a foster care and orphanage. They typically do not take children younger than 5 years old, but there have been a few cases of abandoned babies, that they have had to take into their care. They do not receive government funding and get funds via private donations. We played with the children and they showed us how to dance Azonto, which is the latest dance move in Ghana. We brought various gifts and plenty of candy for the children, which they really liked. It was sad to say goodbye, since they were really reluctant to see us go. It was very touching to see how much the kids appreciated us just showing up.