Naomi Esi Arku Amoah, is a nomienee of MTN Heroes of change season IV.
The 42-year-old is an evangelist and the founder of the Royal Seed Home in Kasoa.
Through her project, Naomi has catered for over 100 street children; some of whom were abandoned as babies.
Naomi Esi Amoah also supports children with special needs.
Why I established Royal Seed
The vision of Royal Seed home is to bring up a needy or homeless child to become a great person in future, and that is what I am working on now. I take in homeless and needy children and give them a future. I have here children from 1 month old to 22years who don’t know their families nor cant trace them.
Most of them are young kids and babies who were picked up from bushes and refuse dumps and brought to me. Some of those that bring them never show up again to check up on them. The children become my sole responsibilities till they are of working age and are assured of a good future.
• What is your motivation?
My father, warned my mum against giving birth to a female child, because girl child education wasn’t important. Unfortunately for me I was born as a girl without any formal education, meanwhile, my dream was to become an air hostess, which never came to pass. I rather ended up on the streets selling tea at night.
I asked my self, “Are there people who also have families and are suffering just as I am doing?”. I later thought it wise not to let my siblings nor anyone I know, go through what I have been through. During those years I had wished to make money and go to school. While selling tea at the train station, I came across school dropouts, and I vowed not to let anyone I know go through what I’ve been through before. I began to lend a helping hand to these children, seventeen years ago, and today, it has resulted in Royal Seed Home.
• How do you fund the project?
In the beginning, my mother sold her belongings and properties to support the vision. But now, I fund this project all by myself. I don’t do any other work than to evangelise on the streets; what I make from there is what I use to take care of the kids. I also roam about pleading with people to help when the kids are sick and have surgeries to be done. This project has survived only by God’s grace and I thank God no kid has lost his or her life under my care.
• What are your major achievements?
I have over hundred children, and my major achievements are as follows
• 8 university kids and 24 senior high school kids
• I have been able to relocate from a plot of land to a much bigger place, that I bought with faith but have not finished paying though
• How much impact has your project had
My project has been able to bring 100’s of homeless and street children from the streets with proper food to feed on.
My project has been able to see kids through school, the infants even understand and speak English. It’s a great joy.
• What challenges have you faced
We have a very bad electricity problem. We are surrounded by heavy bushes, and there is no light on the path from here to the town.
A good Samaritan bought a bus for us from UK and exported it to us for orphanage use, which is to carry the kids to school and church, then back. Though I was not supposed to pay anything at the port for the bus, the officials at the port insisted I give them something, which was GHC 26,000 or else there were going to auction it. They auctioned it and insisted my donor gives them the documents to the bus which he refused till date.
So if the kids have to go to school, they walk two and half hours before they get to the town for school, unless she has funds to rent a trotro to convey them.
• Secondly, most of the kids here have special health disabilities which needs to be attended to, but there are no funds.
• A 2- month old baby boy has a hole in his throat and needs 5 surgeries done which is over GHC12,000 and because of that he has a tube inserted in his stomach which he feeds through, 15 times a day based on the doctors prescription.
• I also have a hermaphrodite case here which is undergoing surgery.
• The children sleep under tents in mosquito nets in the open because there is no roof
• I am yet to finish paying for the land we are occupying.
• I have people who are helping me here who need to be paid.
• I have uncompleted structures here that need to be completed for the kids to sleep in.
• How do you feel when you see the impact your work has had?
I feel alive and happy because I am being able to do the work of the one that called me.
• Do you have any plans for the future?
• To be able to complete this uncompleted structures for the kids to have a roof over their heads, because they are at high risk.
• To also be able to have all the surgery cases and special cases attended to
• To also be able to get a proper lighting system here and finally secure this land before I am ejected one day.
MTN Heroes of Change: Naomi Amoah changing lives of street children
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