Jamestown, Accra, Ghana

There's a bit boy in the street in Jamestown, and for the moment, he's oblivious to the truth he's surrounded by chaos. He doesn't notice the uneven and scarred rocky road or the pieces of trash that sit in its trenches. He doesn't pay attention to how the air smells, some way that's slightly off from most places he could ever dream to go to. For a couple of seconds, he doesn't consider the truth that everything around him is makeshift and make-do. He, in that moment, may well be any little boy in 2016 obsessive about flipping water bottles. This broken place is his playground, and in that instant his only toy is suspended in midair in front of his eyes. He's wearing clothes. He has sandals on his feet. Those things set him with the exception of many other kids around him. He looks, for this millisecond, like one of the crucial lucky ones.

Water bottle flipping in Jamestown, Accra

Jamestown is without doubt one of the oldest neighborhoods in Accra, the capital of Ghana. On this city, they don't mince their words for the sake of politeness. They call Jamestown a slum, a word that does not start to describe the community by Western standards. It is a port neighborhood rife with history that has become home to essentially the most vulnerable families within the city of 2.7 million people. Jamestown's streets--such as they are--are lined with rusted metal, husks of old cars, and clapboard homes which might be often less protection than an inexpensive tent. There's no way kind option to describe where. It's not humble. It's not modest. It is a slum.

The crackle of the water bottle because it falls in the street sounds identical to it does anywhere else within the world, but everything else appears like something different. It appears like desperation.

The cleanest play space in Jamestown

To fully hear it all, you need to know what true desperation feels like. It's different than misery usually sounds in America or the united kingdom. Despite the fact that these kids have a roof over their heads, they can be known by another blunt classification. The folk here call them street children.

Paul Semeh was a street child. He is not far enough far from the hell of it to forget his father dying young and leaving him and his five brothers with their illiterate mother.

"Six boys. She was a housewife then. She needed to do numerous selling at the streets. I learned how you can crawl at the street," he recalls.

Paul Semeh

Street sales--hawking bags of water, tourist trinkets, or raw fruit in the course of busy city throughfares--is some of the few legitimate ways the poor here survive. Semeh remembers it is usually much worse. Children will do whatever they are able to to survive.

"There are individuals who attempt to make the most of us, take our money. 'Go buy drugs for me. Go call a prostitute for me.' Those sorts of things that a normal child wouldn't will we. are available in the market on our own. We're made to do a little of those things," he says.

There's something haunting about how he talks. He's far from that life by many years, but he talks about it as though it's happening to him within the moment.

In some way it is, because he's still within the slum, and he's surrounded by children who seem like he did.

It's a few hours before sundown, and there's a line of kids outside the metal door. They're shouting and grasping on the metal bars that divide the crooked streets from the relative safety at the other side of the wall. They plead to get inside where other children are laughing, skipping rope, and chanting in English. Probably the most children gets inside. Many will leave with no need an opportunity to get past the gate.

Waiting and hoping to get within the Street Children Empowerment Foundation Learning Hub

This safe zone, a space not much bigger than the interior of a quick food restaurant, is the road Children Empowerment Foundation (SCEF). Its play area is a dusty open-air courtyard. Within the small offices, there are books, computers, and craft areas. On a daily basis after school, children can come here for additonal tutoring, playtime, and a snack. Semeh founded the root within the hope he can pull more children out of the slums than might make it on their own.

Children wait outside the SCEF gates while others play inside

On this day, Kay Hullock is within the craft room. She's traveled to Ghana with Right To Play, a charity her employer, PokerStars, helps fund. For the past 15 years, Right To Play has developed games to show and empower children world wide to triumph over the sometimes overwhelming challenges of poverty, disease, and conflict. It is a daunting task, but one who has proven to work in additional than a dozen countries.

Right To Play's Neil Child-Dyer has led Hullock and the remainder of a visiting team onto the streets of Jamestown. He was only some months far from becoming a father for the primary time.

"Hearing the harrowing stories of the challenges facing street children was particularly difficult. The plight of street children in Ghana could be very tough with poverty forcing many children into child labor," he said later. "This deprives them of a childhood and the fundamental right to an education. Right To Play's partnership with SCEF is truly important and a super example of ways using sport and play in lessons could make school fun, encourage kids to wait school, in addition to teaching skills that benefit them within the long term."

For now, Child-Dyer is fidgeting with some kids in a half-built dormitory at the fringe of the SCEF courtyard. In a scene that looks in all places Accra, the local government has halted construction at the facility until the root can get a hold of more cash for allowing. The fee could be 100,000 Ghana cedis, the rough equivalent of £20,000 ($25,000). There's no telling when the basis will get a hold of that sort of cash.

Meanwhile, Hullock has sat down within the craft room to make a tiny paper crown. She finds herself sitting next to a bit of girl named Ernestina. When Hullock finishes her crown, she signs her name to it and places it on Ernestina's head.

"Now you are a real princess," Hullock says, for the instant blind to just how grateful she's made the little girl.

Kay Hullock and Ernestina

For now, the business of the precise To Play games is taking everyone's attention outside. The youngsters within the courtyard are jubilant and flashing the categories of smiles reserved for probably the most optimistic and hopeful people within the world.

Right To Play and the SCEF have engaged these children where they know they'll reach them. Not every child likes to learn, but nearly all like to play. When the games begin, the youngsters barely know they're learning. When they're finished, they've gotten an education without even knowing it.

Students inside SCEF

Right To Play games at SCEF

That's especially important for the road children. Despite hearing from the adults in Ghana that free education is their right, they have got come to be informed that their so-called rights include serious sacrifices.

"The kids need to be at school. They would like to get an education, but there's a huge cost to free education in Ghana. What I mean is, they must buy their very own exercise books. They must pay for his or her exam fees. They've pay for his or her water bill, electricity bill, and all kinds of bills within the school," Semeh says.

Six years ago, Semeh says, it cost a kid $300 for a free education. Since then, that figure has doubled to $600, a fortune within the Jamestown economy. He tells stories of youngsters suffering physical punishment for not paying their fees. He's exasperated by the seemingly inevitable result.

"They're not eating at night. Probably they were leaning against a wall when it was raining during the night, or somebody's looking to defile them," he says. "THAT MAY BE only a put-off. 'I'm not eating. I've not slept well. Somebody has convinced me that that is my right. I've come to college. You must hit me. On top of my hunger and absence of sleep? Take your school!' They only leave. Literally."

Inside an ordinary Jamestown makeshift home

Once Semeh made it out of his slum, he dreamed of a spot children like him could visit escape the abuse. He envisioned a middle where the youngsters could do the homework their illiterate parents couldn't read. In his mind, he saw children playing, learning, and leaving the slums. He pictured giving all of them clean water, decent toilets, and adults who take a sincere interest of their education. He saw children learning to read and finding a path across the countless pitfalls of street life.

"They aren't frustrated. It doesn't matter what their teacher could also be doing to them, they still see education as a key to getting out in their misery," Semeh says. "WHEN YOU can do this, that is what Christianity is all about it. It's about giving to people, making people better, getting people to become better themselves."

Snack time at SCEF

As the daylight starts to cast long shadows over the courtyard, the youngsters pick up their backpacks and line up on the gate. Volunteers and staff members are there with a boxed drink and a packet of snacks. There is a good chance it will likely be the kids' best chance at healthy food for the remainder of the night.

At front of the line, the little princess, Ernestina, wears her Kay Crown with pride. She takes her drink and snack and, in place of leaving in the course of the gate, doubles back into the courtyard. She spots Kay Hullock round the corner and goes to her.

Ernestina looks up at Hullock and gives her food and drinks to the girl who made her a princess. It is a thanks from the kid who can have nothing else to eat to drink until morning.

Hullock, tears forming within the corner of her eyes, says in a sort voice, "Keep them...and the crown."

Ernestina finally turns away and finds her way out into the Jamestown streets. That's when Hullock's resolve finally collapses, and he or she cries.

"I have never experienced such generosity before and it came from an 11-year-old girl with nothing greater than the torn clothes on her back," she says.

The sun has little time left before it sinks over the nearby sea, and the streets of Jamestown are becoming purple and dusty. Children run in every direction, and it sort of feels few adults are watching over them.

The kids see the tourists milling about within the gravel and trash. The youngsters smile and phone the white-faced people "Obruni," the go-to name for any obvious outsider who doesn't usually walk the streets here. A few of these children have a spot to move when the sun finally sets. Some do not.

A couple of years earlier, Semeh walked the slum's streets at night and located a boy named Bernard curled up alone in a clapboard kiosk. Stricken with a disease that made his legs almost useless, the then nine-year-old child have been abandoned by his parents. He'd been at the streets by himself for 3 weeks.

Bernard (center) with the best to Play group and Paul Semeh

Semeh took Bernard in, gave him shelter, crutches, and the way to learn. In this day, he's made best friends with every member of the fitting To Play group. He doesn't want them to leave, they usually don't need to go away him. There's something about his laugh and smile that make everyone believe Paul Semeh's dream can come true. It's pure, refined, infectious optimism in the course of one of the vital hopeless places the Obrunis may be able to imagine.

Bernard, balancing himself expertly on his crutches in the midst of the dust, looks up at Kay Hullock as she stands next to me. The little boy turns to me and asks in perfect English, "Why is she crying?"

Hullock takes one quick breath to steady herself, looks Bernard within the eye, and thru a wash of tears says, "Because you're smiling."

Brad Willis is the PokerStars Head of Blogging. Follow him on Twitter: @BradWillis.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: PokerStars news]