Touch A Life Foundation in Ghana
Touch A Life's work in Ghana, West Africa, began when Pam met Mark Kwadwo through a photograph in the New York Times. His image was on the newspaper's front page, and it was heartbreaking and haunting: his frail, stooped body; his scarred skin; his terrified eyes. Mark was a six-year-old slave. Sold by his parents for the equivalent of $20, Mark worked and lived under the brutal tyranny of the man he called master: a fisherman who had purchased dozens of children to work beside him on Lake Volta, a large, sprawling lake in the northern region of the nation.
Like the estimated thousands of other children sold into slavery in Ghana, Mark worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. He was beaten and malnourished, deprived of an education, and a family's love. Pam was deeply touched by Mark's story, and plagued by a desire to help him – but how?
Nine weeks later, Pam was on a plane to Ghana, where she forged an unlikely and life-changing friendship with Ghanaian abolitionists who were seeking to rescue children off of Lake Volta. Together, Pam and her in-country partners worked to rescue Mark and six other children.
Now Mark is happy, healthy, and most importantly, FREE.
We are the first organization to provide long-term care for former child slaves in Ghana, and are partnering with other organizations who are stepping in to follow our lead.
Today, Mark is no longer a slave. Through the work of Touch A Life, he is a thriving nine-year-old boy. Alongside his siblings Kofi and Hagar – who Pam also rescued – he is in school, living with supportive, loving houseparents, and enjoying his freedom (as well as his childhood).
Since then, the Touch A Life Foundation and our partners in Ghana have gone on to rescue more than ninety children from Lake Volta, and we continue to work every day to find additional resources to rescue the thousands of children who remain in bondage there.
Currently most organizations for the trafficked child provide short-term care and work to reunify trafficked children with their families. Touch A Life steps in when reunification is not an option to provide long-term medical care, education, housing, and psychosocial support for the children in our care.