Child Labor Trafficking in Ghana

More than 50% of the children working on southern Lake Volta’s waters were trafficked into forced labor. Approximately one-fifth of children working in the fishing industry are six years old or younger. Traffickers control children through violence, emotional abuse and limiting access to food. These children have no access to medical attention and never have an opportunity to go to school.

Over 21,000 children are currently enslaved on Lake Volta.

Survivors of trafficking are not truly free until they are free of the trauma. Globally, there is an increased need of services for survivors including art therapy. Art therapy can cover various forms, from drawing to photography to painting and fashion design and many grassroots organizations like Beauty for Freedom are leading the charge in implementing this programming into their platforms, but despite extensive research by therapists and academics, it has been excluded from policies and advocacy material of most NGOs.

Across the world, art therapy is helping survivors regain social and economic independence.

Summer 2017, our Beauty for Freedom team traveled to Winneba, Ghana and taught a 3-week creative arts therapy intensive program featuring photography, fashion, painting and mural-making courses to over 360 survivors of trafficking and at-risk youth. The over 5000 images the youth shot culminated in a beautiful book “Illuminate Ghana” which we are publishing with 50% of the proceeds being donated to the Winneba-based NGO and 50% of the proceeds going back into our art therapy programming. These amazing youth are empowered by the fact that their work could possibly sustain their educations for the next year.