Catholic Action for Street children

Catholic Action for Street children – Archdiocese of Accra

C.A.S. Catholic Action for Street Children

Address: Dr. Nanka Bruce Street S / N, Lartebiokorshie, Accra-Ghana
e-mail: casghana@gmail.com
Phone: (+233) 27755 27 39

Brother Jos Van Dinter Brothers FIC – Director of C.A.S.

Catholic Action for Street Children (CAS) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) established in 1992, to help children living on the streets of Accra, Ashaiman and the metropolis of Tema, (metropolitan areas of the Great Accra).

The objective of C.A.S. is to help children on the streets of Accra to leave the street, detoxify them, provide basic health care, give them non-formal education and teach them skills and trades, so that they are self-sufficient and functional in society.

C.A.S. is an NGO constituted by the Archdiocese of Accra. (An Archdiocese is an Institution of the Catholic Church, which hierarchically represents a certain region.)

The Catholic Church, concerned about the thousands of children living on the streets in Accra at the end of the 1980s, began accompanying these children, identifying the best way to help them leave the street.

For this reason, the Catholic Church began to investigate who these children were, why they lived in the street and what could be the best way to help them recover the dignity that, without any doubt, they had completely lost.

The main objective of CAS is that these children receive the love, affection and tenderness that life has denied them, in order to prepare them to be autonomous and functional.

To achieve this goal, some thirty years ago, the Archdiocese of Accra commissioned the Brothers of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, F.I.C. (Brothers of the Immaculate Conception), specifically to Brother Jos Van Dinter, the constitution of the NGO C.A.S. – Catholic Action for Street Children.

In line with that, Catholic Action for Street Children realizes:

Program 1 – Work in the streets: accompaniment, follow-up and education programs in street corners.
Program 2. House – Refuge in Accra: Health care, detoxification, literacy and non-formal education in English. The House – Refuge of Accra is at Dr. Nanka Bruce Rd, Lartebiokorshie. A couple of streets from the “Rubbish dump of Agbogbloshie”.
Program 3. Training in Skills and trades, in the House – Refuge in Accra: Training in painting, sewing, cooking, hairdressing, makeup, making wood crafts, etc.
Program 4. Hopeland Center, in Adjei Kojo (Greater Accra): when the young people have decided to leave the street permanently, they are sent to the Hopeland Center Farm, far from the city center, where they will perfect the trades learned in the House – Refuge of Accra and learn some more technical jobs.
Program 5. Short-term sponsorship (one year and a half) or long-term sponsorship (three years): Children who visit the Refuge House are “prepared” to listen to an instructor and behave as expected. The duration of this preparation period varies from child to child. Some have had a type of educational training, many begin as illiterate. Many learn to behave correctly, others need a lot of time to do it.