Giving To Ghana

The Calm Spa and Salon team have launched the non-profit organization  “Calm Cares” taking the initiative to help others in need. As a team, we have created our first project “Giving to Ghana.”

We are united in a goal to “free the children and give them hope!” An effort to provide necessary funding to help these children recover from the devastating effects of what they have been put through.

One of the biggest social problems Ghana is facing is child trafficking: thousands of children are recruited, transported, transferred and traded to become cheap labor. A major contributor to this problem is the fishing industry in the Volta region.

In the east of Ghana lies Lake Volta, the world’s biggest man-made lake. At a glance a beautiful lake, but it contains an ugly and shocking truth. Going to the lake, you will see hundreds of children working; peddling, bailing water, fishing and diving to disentangle nets. They are sold or given away by their families, brought into a strange and often hostile environment, exposed to dangerous and unhealthy situations.

The children, some only 4 years old, are at the mercy of a master (fisherman) who treat them as cheap laborers who can be maltreated. Because the child has little value to his master, there is no necessity to clothe or feed them properly. They have no access to health care or education and work for very long hours which at times is very dangerous. A lot of child slaves witness the death of others, who are sometimes their friends.

“All the time I was working on the lake, I was aware that I could die too, at any moment.”
(Kwaku, rescued from child trafficking in 2009)

Poverty, ignorance and lack of education can be seen as the three most important reasons why child labor and child trafficking in Ghana exists.

We traveled to Ghana ( at our own expenses) in August 2018 and completed most of the boarding home for rescued child slaves “Melor Vinye Wo” (I love all my children), we spread awareness to the local community, met over 80 rescued children and helped to try and free children that were working on the lake.

Update for 2019: Melor Vinye Wo is now complete and we are working towards rescuing children from slavery, and towards the children’s future within the facility. We want to help empower the children of Ghana and give them hope!

We appreciate your participate in a truly noble cause. Success of the organizations dedicated to resolving this problem is on going and we will continue to help!