Ghanaian Street Children In Film Acting Project

The Agency Lowe and Partners, an international advertising agency headquarters in London, is providing financial support to encourage under-privilege children on the streets of Accra to make their own films in Ghana.

Dubbed: “Summer Film Project for Street Children”, officials of the Agency, who visited Ghana recently, are partnering the Street Academy, an organization providing free basic education to children on the streets in Accra to implement the project.

The delegation together with the Street Academy Director Ataa Lartey as part of the arrangement for the project paid a courtesy a call on the management of Lintas Ghana limited, a subsidiary of the Advantage Group of companies in Accra.

The Agency Lowe and Partners for the past three years every summer had undertook the film project in collaboration with the Akosia, a not for profit organization that develops, facilitates and funds summer projects for children around the world. The project trained the children to learn to make their own films with the aim to enable them to express themselves and encourage them in finding their talents.

Volunteers with professional skills in camera, sound making, story-telling and music not only from Ghana but also from the USA, Greece and Germany support the project.

The Street Academy located behind the Art Centre of Accra and founded 23 years ago, had recruited street children and provided them with basic skills in writing, reading, Mathematics among many things to enable them to advance to formal schools.

Mrs Norkor Duah, Head of Lintas Ghana, who is also a Patron of the Academy, underscored the importance for her company and the Agency to fulfil their corporate social responsibilities to find and support new talents for future Ghanaian in the entertainment industry. “The street children often have the feeling of being at the end of the road and even if they have talents aren’t able to live them out because of a deficit of money,” Mrs Duah said.

As a result, she embraced the idea for giving under privileged children the chance to achieve little training in filmmaking and to cultivate also the young talents of poor families.

For the next years, Mrs Duah said she would work to strengthen the collaboration between Street Academy and Akosia organization. This year the films created by children will be presented at James Town in Accra, where most of the street children come from. Mr Ataa Lartey said in 2012 the presentations of the films would be done at the National Theatre for the general public to see.