Our History

Our History  

According to UN sources there are up to 150 million street children in the world today. Various categories of street children exist. There are those who work on the streets as their only means of getting money, those who take refuge on the streets during the day but return to some form of family at night and those who permanently live on the street without a family network or guardian to give them protection. But the most vulnerable are those who actually sleep and live on the streets, hiding under bridges, in gutters, and in railway stations. They depend on strangers and most times work as potters and house-helps to survive. While others may have small jobs such as shoe-shining or market-selling to pull through, many also end up dying on the pavement-where they sleep. Some of these children are used on daily basis to traffic drugs or become victims of drug-trafficking, engage in prostitution, armed robbery and most times become victims of police and gang rivalry. This phenomena has resulted in streetism and increase in the number of school drop-out in Africa.

There are other minorities who also face similar social and economic problems like trafficked children, persons living with disabilities, who are constantly stigmatized and discriminated against and brilliant but needy children who drop out of school every year. We believe that without some form of education and economic empowerment training, these people may go through very difficult times living crime free lives.

Quality Education is often expressed in terms of acquiring employable skills such as analytical and critical reasoning, communication skills and ICT competencies. To help address simultaneously, access to education, quality and employment generation skills, including self- employment, a young man who is passionate about using ICT skills to empower the lives of the underprivileged and deprived in society founded the Street Kare Initiative, Africa (SKI Africa).

A non-governmental organization to help address the plight of young people from deprived communities who are interested in ICT education and skills training but cannot afford the cost, To advocate for youth entrepreneurship and help mitigate the many challenges youths face in Ghana, Africa and around the world.

The foundation’s ICT programmes is run by The SKI Institute of Technology. A training institute which the foundation uses to offer its ICT based skills training programmes to help produce quality middle level human resource personnel to improve the productivity and competitiveness of the skilled workforce. With skills training based education, poverty can be eradicated. When you give people access to school so they can learn how to read and write or learn a skill, then they will be empowered to take care of themselves and their family.  If people in high poverty areas are educated they will be able to climb out of poverty and will have the power and the ability to work for poverty eradication.

Director’s Message

Over the last few years, the impact of Information Communication Technology on poverty eradication cannot be over emphasized. It is clear that in the coming decades, Information and Communication Technology will affect and reshape most parts of our society.  ICT has a lot of roles to play in the country’s human resource development, and the drivers of this are the youths. Unfortunately, most youths in sub-Saharan Africa have been disadvantaged due to unfavorable economic policies across the continent. Especially those who live in urban-slum communities, they live in excruciating poverty with no hope in sight for the future. Most of these youths are used to traffic drugs on daily basis. The unemployed ones are often used by affluent people in society as destructive tools to cause mayhem for a petty especially, during elections.

As the founder and Chief Executive of this noble organization, it has been my wish and long term vision to find modern ways to empower youths from urban-slum and rural deprived communities. I have a vision, and my vision is that, I want to empower and change the life of youths from a deprived community with ICT based skills training. If I am able to change the life of one of such youths, my mission is fulfilled. Believe me, when people get to know their skills and abilities they can improve their standard of living. They can rely on themselves to find jobs that suite their abilities the more and this will open opportunities for them and for others to utilize their capabilities.

 “If you want to change the world, unless you change the life of the ordinary” they say.  so we decided to invest in simple but innovative empowerment opportunities that are meant to engage the less privileged, marginalized and deprived youths in society and provide them with jobs because, there are so many employment opportunities to be explored in the IT sector but you do need a plentiful supply of medium and high-qualified labour to deliver these products and these youths, we believe, will be able to fill this gap and generate employment for themselves and more for others.

Our innovative programmes provide a combination of the study of IT with business modules designed to enable our students explore their technical innovations commercially. It gives them the ability to programme and use multimedia to develop innovative business solutions.

As an institution, our small way of contributing to youth’s development in Ghana and Africa is to make ICT based skills training accessible and affordable to all. Although, small it may be, but like Mother Teresa said “All that we do is but a drop of water in the ocean. But if we didn’t contribute that drop, there would be no ocean”.

We at SKI Africa will continue to use technological innovations to create employment opportunities for youths who have little or no formal skills but are ambitious and committed to their personal transformation and change lives of millions on our continent. - CEO/ Founding Director