A school born from what the sisters saw in the streets

In Kumasi, one of Ghana’s largest cities and the commercial heart of the Ashanti Region, poverty is often visible in motion. Around the city’s crowded markets, women carry goods on their heads for traders and customers, earning small amounts from one load to the next. Many of these female head porters, commonly known in Ghana as kayayei, have migrated from poorer communities in search of work; others are women trying to support children and relatives in circumstances that leave them with very few alternatives.

For a mother with a baby, the work is harder still. Safe-Child Advocacy, a ministry established by the Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi and managed by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, encountered women who worked in and around the markets while carrying their babies on their backs. Some were young mothers whose pregnancies had arisen from exploitative relationships on the streets. Others were married women who had left economically distressed rural communities for Kumasi, hoping that work in the city would enable them to support families left behind.

The immediate problem was easy to see: a woman could hardly stop working simply because she had given birth. Without reliable child care, her baby accompanied her through the market, surrounded from the beginning of life by exhausting work, congestion, insecurity and the instability associated with survival on the streets.

The deeper problem was less visible, yet potentially more enduring. A child born into a street-connected environment could grow up regarding that environment not as a temporary crisis in the mother’s life, but as the ordinary shape of childhood itself. Poverty could therefore reproduce not only economic disadvantage but an entire way of living from one generation to the next.

St. Vincent de Paul Day Care was created as a response to both realities.

Giving a mother the freedom to work without carrying her child into the street

Located at Abinkyi Market in Kumasi, the center offered mothers a practical arrangement with potentially far-reaching consequences. During the working day, they could leave their babies and young children in a protected environment rather than carrying them while transporting goods through the market.

For the mothers, this meant being able to earn a livelihood with less physical strain and less anxiety about a child exposed to the hazards of a crowded commercial district. For the children, however, the change was more profound: several hours each day that might otherwise have been spent on the streets became hours in a classroom, a play area or the care of an adult whose task was to nurture them.

Children at play at St. Vincent de Paul Day Care in Kumasi, Ghana. The center provided a safe, nurturing environment and early childhood education for the young children of street-connected and market-working mothers.
Photo: Safe-Child Advocacy, Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi.

Safe-Child Advocacy understood the center as more than a service of convenience. From the beginning, its purpose included prevention. The hope was that children introduced early to school, learning and a stable daily routine would be more likely to continue into formal education and less likely to become another generation living or working permanently on the streets.

That meant working with the mothers as well as with their children. While children attended the center, staff periodically met with mothers and encouraged them to regard education as a long-term investment. Early childhood care therefore became one part of a wider conversation about what kind of future a family might still be able to build.

More than somewhere to leave a baby

The name “Day Care” might suggest a modest childcare facility. In practice, St. Vincent de Paul Day Care gradually developed into an early childhood school offering education from crèche through Kindergarten 2, the stage immediately preceding primary education in Ghana.

Children learned songs and rhymes, took part in creative arts and recreational activities, and developed the routines associated with classroom life. They were given opportunities to play, speak, perform, cooperate and discover abilities that the circumstances surrounding their families might otherwise have left little room to cultivate.

The center’s records give a glimpse of how substantial the work had become. In 2024 alone, St. Vincent de Paul Day Care had 104 pupils distributed across crèche, pre-nursery, Nursery 1 and 2, and Kindergarten 1 and 2. Sixteen staff members were involved in the work of the center that year.

Young children inside the nursery supported by Safe-Child Advocacy in Kumasi. The program offered age-appropriate early learning as well as a safe place to eat, play, and rest while their mothers worked.
Photo: Adamfo Ghana / Safe-Child Advocacy.

Twelve Kindergarten 2 children graduated to primary school in 2024. Another eight graduated in 2025. These were small ceremonies when measured against the educational systems of a large country, yet each transition carried particular significance in a ministry created precisely to prevent childhood on the streets from becoming a permanent inheritance.

By the time the center closed, more than 500 children had received early childhood education there. Safe-Child Advocacy reported that many of them had gone on to different levels of formal education.

Teaching children to expect something more

One of the most revealing activities at the center was its Career Day. In 2024, children arrived dressed as the adults they imagined they might one day become: teachers, nurses, doctors, pilots, police officers, farmers, lawyers, bankers and members of other professions.

At first glance, such a celebration is familiar in schools around the world. At St. Vincent de Paul Day Care, however, it carried another layer of meaning. Children whose earliest family experience might have been shaped by insecure informal labor were being deliberately invited to imagine a future larger than the circumstances into which they had been born.

There were sports competitions, too. In 2024, the children competed with pupils from Emmanuel School in activities such as egg races, bottle-filling and color games, eventually winning three of four events. The annual report emphasized not simply the victory but the confidence, cooperation and communication skills the experience encouraged.

A Cultural Day brought another dimension to the children’s formation. Pupils explored Ghana’s sixteen regions, traditional foods and landmarks, performed dances, identified animals and objects in Twi, and worked with Ghanaian proverbs. Education was not presented as an escape from their culture or background, but as a means of becoming more deeply rooted in it.

A pupil takes the microphone during Cultural Day at St. Vincent de Paul Day Care in Kumasi. Through traditional dress, dance, language, food, and regional history, the children were encouraged to discover and celebrate Ghana’s cultural heritage.
Photo: Safe-Child Advocacy, Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi.

They also visited places beyond the immediate world of the market. Excursions included Manhyia Palace, a central institution in the history of the Asante people, and in later activities places such as Kumasi Airport, the city mall and zoological gardens. The geographical world available to the children was gradually being enlarged along with their imagined future.

Care, education and dignity

The center belonged to a much wider response to street-connected childhood developed by Safe-Child Advocacy. Founded in 2005 under the Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi and originally known as the Street Children Project, the organization works with children, young people and women affected by street life and other forms of vulnerability.

Its services developed along complementary lines. The Drop-in Centre provides a safe place where street-connected children can rest, speak with trusted adults and begin the process of leaving the streets. The St. Louise de Marillac Vocational Training Centre offers vulnerable girls and young women opportunities for vocational formation and a different path toward economic independence. St. Vincent de Paul Day Care intervened at an even earlier stage of the cycle: the first years of a child’s life.

Together, these ministries reflect an important characteristic of Vincentian service. The person in poverty is not reduced to the problem visible at a particular moment. A mother may need somewhere safe for her baby today, income tomorrow, education for her child for years to come and, throughout the entire process, people willing to accompany rather than simply assist her.

The Vincentian character of St. Vincent de Paul Day Care was therefore expressed less by its name than by what happened there every day. It brought service to people whose poverty was visible in the markets, responded to an immediate need without losing sight of its causes, and tried to protect the dignity and future of both mother and child.

The children themselves were introduced to this tradition. When the center celebrated the feast of St. Vincent de Paul in 2024, pupils recounted his life and reflected on the responsibility to help people who have less. Prayer, a shared meal and the story of the center’s patron linked their ordinary school life to a much older spirituality of service.

A center that was still looking toward the future

Nothing in the 2024 annual report suggests an institution preparing to disappear. The opposite was true. The center hoped to increase enrollment beyond 104 children, create an information and communications technology laboratory for kindergarten pupils, improve security with additional cameras and obtain a more reliable school bus.

There were ordinary difficulties. The existing bus frequently broke down, some parents were slow to pay fees or provide basic toiletries, attendance at parent-teacher meetings could be disappointing, and the school needed more furniture. These were the kinds of problems that institutions serving economically fragile families often have to manage while continuing their work.

At the same time, outside scrutiny provided an encouraging assessment. Representatives of Ghana’s Department of Social Welfare inspected the center in May 2024, examining classrooms, learning materials and the quality of care. Safe-Child Advocacy reported that the officials expressed satisfaction with the standards they found.

The work continued through 2025. The children celebrated Career Day, took part in a quiz competition, went on excursions, graduated and returned for another academic year. On January 24, 2026, St. Vincent de Paul Day Care held an opening Mass marking what everyone expected to be another year of learning and growth.

Pupils and staff of St. Vincent de Paul Day Care during the Opening Mass for the new academic year on January 24, 2026. At the time, the school was beginning another year “filled with hope and promise”; six months later, it would close.
Photo: Safe-Child Advocacy, Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi.

Six months later, the school was closing.

When the place meant to protect children could no longer guarantee their well-being

The decision was not made because the need for St. Vincent de Paul Day Care had disappeared. Nor had the center simply completed a planned ten-year project. Conditions around the premises had deteriorated to a point at which those responsible for the ministry concluded that continuing there posed unacceptable risks to pupils and staff.

Two large drains close to the school had contributed to a rapid worsening of hygiene around the site. Safe-Child Advocacy also reported significant noise and welfare concerns associated with conditions in the densely settled area surrounding the center.

For an institution whose purpose was to create a safe environment away from the hazards of the street, the contradiction had become impossible to ignore. Protection could not remain merely an intention; the physical place itself had to be capable of providing it.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi and the Daughters of Charity therefore consulted the Board of Safe-Child Advocacy, the provincial leadership of the Daughters and other stakeholders. The decision they reached was painful but clear: St. Vincent de Paul Day Care would close.

The last graduation

On Thursday, July 23, 2026, children, parents, teachers, sisters and collaborators gathered for a ceremony that was simultaneously a graduation and a farewell. After ten years, the center formally ended its service.

St. Vincent de Paul Day Care marked the end of ten years of service with a closing and graduation ceremony in Kumasi on July 23, 2026. Children performed, received awards, and prepared for the next stage of their education as the school said farewell.
Photo: Safe-Child Advocacy, Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi.

The children did what children at the school had learned to do: they performed. There were poems, songs, choreography, speeches and even a newscast. Awards recognized pupils who had distinguished themselves in different areas, while the graduating children were encouraged to continue working hard as they moved into the next stage of their education.

Headmistress Sr. Victoria Kotetane, D.C., thanked the Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi, parents, staff and everyone who had supported the center over the years. Speaking for the Safe-Child Advocacy Board and its director, Sr. Olivia Umoh, D.C., administrator Akwasi Prempeh explained that the closure had been decided in the interest of the children and staff.

There is something particularly poignant about a school ending with children performing what they have learned. The final images were not of empty classrooms, but of children speaking, singing, receiving awards and preparing to move forward.

That may be the most fitting way to understand what the center left behind.

More than 500 interruptions in a cycle

Social ministries are often described through the number of people they have “served.” St. Vincent de Paul Day Care served more than 500 children, yet the number means more when one asks what the service was intended to interrupt.

For a decade, hundreds of children spent their early years somewhere other than the streets where their mothers struggled to earn a living. They encountered teachers, books, games, songs and classmates. They learned that there was a Kindergarten 2 after Kindergarten 1, a primary school after kindergarten and, beyond that, possibilities that could be represented by a nurse’s uniform, a teacher’s clothes or a doctor’s coat on Career Day.

Children pictured in Adamfo Ghana’s documentation of the Safe-Child Advocacy day care initiative in Kumasi, created to give young children a safer beginning away from street life.
Photo: Adamfo Ghana.

Their mothers received something important as well. The center recognized that poverty does not cancel motherhood and that a woman should not have to choose between earning enough to survive and keeping her young child safe. Helping a mother work and helping her child learn were treated as parts of the same task.

Not every story that begins in poverty follows the same trajectory, and early childhood education alone cannot remove the structural forces that push families toward the streets. St. Vincent de Paul Day Care nevertheless demonstrated what prevention can look like when it becomes concrete: a room, a teacher, a meal, a song, a safe working day for a mother and the expectation that her child will continue to school.

The building ceased to fulfill that mission in July 2026. The larger Vincentian challenge that gave birth to it remains: to encounter people where poverty places them, respond to what threatens their dignity now, and work patiently so that deprivation does not become the inheritance of the next generation.