About our current beneficiaries:

Nine of our current beneficiaries are youth with disabilities from Ghana who have no traceable family. Almost all of them came to OAfrica over 15 years ago as pre-verbal babies abandoned, or referred from orphanages or hospitals. Therefore, they have no traceable family in OAfrica to resettle them in. They have outlived their projected life expectancy. Samaritan’s Reach is partnering with OAfrica to take over their care full-time and construct sustainable housing for them.

The majority of our beneficiaries have Cerebral Palsy (CP), which is the leading cause of physical disability in children worldwide. Children with CP often have difficulty with walking, speaking, swallowing, writing, and using the bathroom. Some children with CP also experience epilepsy, which is accompanied by seizures. In Ghana, about 22,000 children are estimated to live with CP.

The death rate of children with cerebral palsy in Ghana is 15 times that of the average child in a developing country.

Research suggests that more than 85% of children and young adults with CP in Ghana do not attend school because they do not meet the basic functional capabilities the government requires for school enrolment. These are the infamous “shut-in” people with disabilities, locked up (and often tied up to avoid self-harm) for 8 to 12 hours while the carer goes to work. These problems are compounded by social stigma, which forces caregivers to hide or abandon children with cerebral palsy. Samaritan’s Reach brings sustainable community-based solutions that will allow them to thrive within foster families and become integrated within their communities.