The Kunke Foundation is a small charity working in Mensakrom, a small town in the Central Region, to make a big difference in the lives of children in this area.
The foundation runs on the principle of adding value to the lives of the people of Mensakrom.
The foundation’s initiatives run on The Boafo Projects where individuals and organisations are called upon to help the less fortunate people of Mensakrom in various ways.
Mission:
The Kunke Foundation’s work is basically designed to achieve the following goals for the town of Mensakrom:
- Reduce illiteracy among children and youth in Mensakrom
- Emphasize and promote quality education and learning
- Make every child of school going age attend school
- Initiate programs that will get every child in Mensakrom to read
- Bring the evolving beauty of the digital world to the people of Mensakrom through a village IT program.
- Network the children of Mensakrom to opportunities outside their own small world through exchange program initiatives, and in the process, make it a model center of opportunities for the surrounding villages and towns.
- Build a clean, green, healthy town
- Provide guidance for growing teenagers on a self discovery path
How the foundation works
The foundation’s programmes are built to establish focus, target goals and employ consistent medium to long term strategies in cost effective ways; and all these are done with the local people using their own creative energies, their talent, skills and resources in the spirit of self help; tapping into their own dream for their children to implement and actualize the projects and programs.
We employ volunteers and network with big and small organizations that believe and share our beliefs and have a passion to help.
The model town
The Kunke Foundation has adopted Mensakrom as its model town and has begun a series of specific programmes to cause a transformation.
The programmes are basically focused on children and teenagers. The whole idea is that 15years from now Mensakrom will firmly be in the hands of today’s young teenagers; 15 years from now its young children will be getting ready to make important transitions to adulthood.
Between now and then the future of Mensakrom and its inhabitants will be determined by the choices and opportunities created for today’s young ones.
Modelling the future of Mensakrom means focusing on the future of its children and youth of today and our concept of that model town is our dream for its children.
The two together makes the vision of The Kunke Foundation and we believe that being creatively consistent, having a long term focus, initiating change, inspiring the people, enlightening their paths and making them believe in themselves through the work we do, can get us there.
Projects
The Boafo Projects is a series of projects that The Kunke Foundation undertakes annually.
Basically, each of these projects has a different theme and a set of objectives.
In 2006 the first Boafo Project was undertaken with the primary goal of soliciting for used clothing from schools in Accra and distributing it to deprived and needy children in Mensakrom and Mansofo.
The project Manager, Martina Korsah, mobilised the uniforms, bags and used clothing from the various schools.
The President of The Kunke Foundation, Michael Kunke, presented a hundred used school uniforms, clothing, school bags and shoes to children from the Mansofo ADA Primary School and the Mensakrom ADA School.
Last year, the foundation had the Boafo Project 2009.
Among the items presented included slates, boxes of chalk, learning materials such as wall illustrations [of numerals, alphabets and human body parts], puzzles and wooden wall clocks.
Just last month, the foundation embarked on a follow-up trip to assess how the children were benefitting from the learning materials it presented.
The trip revealed that many of the pupils were benefitting tremendously form the learning materials donated by The Kunke Foundation.
This year the foundation is seeking to renovate a defunct post office and convert it into a community library as its Boafo Project 2010.
The community library project is a collaborative effort between the chief and people of Mensakrom and The Kunke Foundation, which is facilitating the project in partnership with Life Bridge 68.
When finished, the library, which will be shared by the town’s three basic schools, will also serve children in four surrounding villages.
It is against this backdrop that the foundation is appealing to corporate institutions, philanthropists, government agencies and churches to help affect positively the lives of children in Mensakrom, by donating generously to the foundation.
More information about the foundation can be accessed on its websitewww.thekunkefoundation.org.
The Kunke Foundation …Bettering the lives of children in Mensakrom – just great!