Africa’s Village of Hope announces change in U.S. oversight
Students walk through the Children’s Art Village plaza outside Hope Christian Academy. In 2009, 35 American and five Ghanaian artists conducted classes for more than 200 children at the school and the Village of Hope. (Photo by Erik Tryggestad)
Since its founding in 1989, the Village of Hope has grown from a small orphanage with eight children to a multifaceted ministry.
Located near the capital of the West African nation of Ghana, the church-supported ministry, founded by Christians from Ghana and the U.S., now cares for 219 children and includes:
• Two elementary schools — Hope Christian Academy, with 726 students, and the Church of Christ School at Nkwatia, in Ghana’s Eastern Region, with 325 students.
• A vocational training center
• A feeding program for teenagers who live on the streets of Ghana, feeding about 100 each week
• A 50-acre farm that produces food to feed the children in the orphanage, the teenagers at the vocational training center and the youths in the feeding program.
• An evangelism ministry that has resulted in the planting of 12 Churches of Christ.
• Hope college, a high school launched in 2012 that has an enrollment of 68 students.
“Owing to this phenomenal growth, it has become necessary for the Village of Hope to have focused attention in its operations in the United States,” said three Ghanaian Christians with ties to the ministry in a recent letter to supporters — Kwasi Tweneboa-Kodua, a member of the ministry’s board of directors; Fred Asare, managing director of the ministry; and John Sackey, an elder of the Vertical Centre Church of Christ in Tema, Ghana, which oversees the work.
Oversight of the ministry’s U.S. operations have moved from Searcy, Ark.-based Ghana West Africa Missions, or GWAM, to the Springtown Church of Christ in Texas. The Texas church will work with the Vertical Centre church to oversee the work. GWAM will continue to receive funds for a rural water development program and evangelism done in partnership with the Village of Hope.
“We pray the Lord’s continuous blessings on you,” the Ghanaian Christians said in the letter, “as we labor together in saving precious lives and nurturing children for eternity with God.”
See our 2010 feature on the Village of Hope, part of our Global South series.
