The Facility & Vision

So, the name of the facility will be Kingdom of Christ Academy. The facility will have two main purposes:

The first purpose of the facility will be the basketball side of things, and we are calling this part Kingdom Hoops Ghana. Kingdom Hoops Ghana will mirror what the Right to Dream (www.righttodream.com) has done with their soccer program, but will have an emphasis on a Christ-centered education. Kingdom Hoops Ghana will serve the purpose of giving disadvantaged children (aged 9 & up) an education and housing, while at the same time training them in basketball skills. With this basketball section, the goal will be to coordinate it with Jake’s hosting program, so that when the kids reach the age of 15 or so, they would have the opportunity to come to the U.S. on an F-1 visa and receive a high school education from the United States. Mark’s already established program (the Fadama Vikings) will merge into Jake’s vision and be renamed Kingdom Hoops. So, these will be the first players in the Kingdom Hoops Ghana program. So, this part of the Academy will be for the ‘Nana Yaw’s’ of Ghana – those who have basketball talent or are interested in having the opportunity to be trained in it. This segment of the facility will include a basketball gym, school, and housing. All of this was the original vision that Jake had in observing the Right to Dream organization, and it is what fueled the beginnings of Project:Ghana.

Then, this summer, both Jake and I kept coming back to the same question….what about impoverished children in Ghana that are too young to be involved in basketball, have physical limitations, no basketball skills/experience, etc? How can we just stick to helping on the basketball side of things, and not do anything about the children and families living in the poorest conditions possible? These children have no chance at an education, because in Ghana you have to pay to go to school. It’s as simple as that. There is no free education. And, what we have learned through our adoption process, and also through Jake’s interviews with the Right to Dream student/athletes, is that there is a bigger question in these kids’ minds. The question is, ‘When am I going to eat? How am I going to eat?’. One RTD student shared with Jake that before he came to RTD, he sometimes would only be able to scrounge up 1 meal in 3 days. I can’t even imagine that, but in Ghana it is a day-to-day reality for too many families, and too many children. Jake constantly talks about that interview in particular, and I know it echoed in his mind all summer long.

So, because of all that Jake decided to also incorporate in the facility a housing arrangement for 100 children who fall into any of the following categories:

1) 1 or both parents deceased, or child abandoned with relatives who do not have the means to care for child
2) Family income less than $1000/year (for example, this would be Solomon’s situation)
3) No educational opportunities available
4) Parent hired as staff member

This housing arrangement might sound similar to an orphanage, and it is. However, the one thing that will be different, is that the children living at the academy who fall into the above categories will be educated. We have learned that Ghana very much frowns upon orphanages. There is a slogan in the country that indicates there are no ‘orphans’ in Ghana because they are all family and will care for one another. Hence there are not many orphanages in Ghana to begin with, and recently a handful have been shut down because of corruption, and because of improper care of the children. Therefore, many of the children live on the streets, or hang out in the villages, but are not necessarily getting proper care or food. Because our housing for the orphans/needy children will involve schooling, and will be fashioned right alongside Kingdom Hoops Ghana, we know that we have an exciting set-up for giving these children opportunities that they wouldn’t have in a typical orphanage setting.

One goal of the facility is to hire and train the natives to work at the facility. For example, Solomon’s dad was a farmer. So, he could be given the option to farm the land which we would use for food, and then he and his family could stay in the housing….Solomon would receive an education. We will also be looking to hire a handful of Ghanaian teachers for the school. It’s a beautiful set-up, and I am excited about it!

Lastly, a very exciting thing is that our adoption agency, About A Child, will be partnering with us to process adoptions for children who qualify. The unaccessability and instability of orphanages already set up in Ghana has been a huge road block for our own adoption, as well as for our agency. To date, there is just no clear connection that our agency has been able to make in Ghana to be able to confidently promote their Ghana adoption program. We are prayerful, that the Kingdom of Christ Academy will become the means for About A Child to be able to start processing adoptions consistently. In the mean time, the academy would educate the waiting children, and obviously care for their basic needs.

So, you can see there are a lot of parts to this, and there is really no short way of explaining it all, so sorry for the extremely long post! When I think through all these moving parts - the staff that we will need to find, the inexperience that Jake and I have in the educational/school side of things, and the money that needs to be raised for this, I get completely overwhelmed. But I know that God has a plan. And, if it is His will, this facility will be created. I’ve found myself clinging to this verse:

Matthew 19:26 "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

It really just says it all doesn’t it? Which is why I just had to put it on our Project Ghana wristbands!
(They just came in yesterday and they are lookin good!)

And, there you have it. That is the plan. That is the vision. And, you know I'll keep you updated on the progress!