This campaign has now closed
'Spirit children' in northern Ghana are at unprecedented risk of infanticide. Your donations could help us to tackle this phenomenon in many of the rural communities we work with, bringing us one step closer to AfriKids' goal of making Ghana a beacon for child rights, saving lives and little smiles.
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Beneficiaries
Situation
In northern Ghana, children are primarily labelled as ‘spirit children’ when they are born with a disability, medical condition, or when an unfortunate event in the child’s family or community coincides with their birth (such as the death of a family member). These ‘spirit children’ are believed to have come from another world to bring harm or misfortune to the community they are born into, and regarded as ‘cursed’. As a result, they are often at risk of neglect, abuse and infanticide.
Solution
AfriKids is the only organisation to successfully work in 58 communities to declare an end to the Spirit Child Phenomenon (SCP), saving an estimated 1,297 lives. 63 traditional healers (who diagnose spirit children) have successfully transitioned into dedicated ‘Right to Life’ promoters, working to further change attitudes around SCP in local communities. We want to take the methods we have tried and tested for achieving this to a larger scale, expanding our SCP advocacy across northern Ghana.
