Operation Mango Tree

The goal of Operation Mango Tree is to give the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children in Bolgatanga’s community a fair start in life.

Operation Mango Tree is the development of one remarkable woman’s work with children; Mama Laadi. Mama Laadi is a trained community nurse and from her own time as a street child she has constantly been helping the most vulnerable children she meets, often when they have been written off for dead because of their state of health, because they are orphaned or believed to be spirit children. AfriKids first started working with Mama Laadi in 2004 when we met her living in a tiny nurses room with 12 children, caring from them by stretching her own small income and begging, borrowing and appealing to people she knew locally for support. AfriKids quickly rented her accommodation and as she proved her ability to care for larger number of children with complex cases with the same level of love and care, we built her a large permanent home.

Mama Laadi’s Foster home is a family home to 35 children who care for each other through a buddy system, overseen by Mama Laadi and her small support staff. It is a unique home for the small percentage of children who cannot be resettled with family and require permanent high quality residential care. As the children grow up they are helped through to independent life by the Young Entrepreneurs Programme.

Operation Mango Tree has a strongly supportive and active local management team which is working with AfriKids Ghana to develop businesses that will help the project become independently sustained. These include 'Mama's Place' a popular guest house which opened in Bolgatanga in 2009 and generates a profit to help pay for the running costs of the foster home.