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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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A Thread of Hope
Kay Bliss '69 and Kaneisha Grayson '06
help fashion a future for the street girls of Accra, Ghana
By Lori DesRochers '06
Recounting her story in impeccable English, 19-year-old Nana Akyaa
Yeboah seems like an ordinary young woman from Accra, the capital of
Ghana. Her permed hair is a little unkempt and her clothing slightly
wrinkled, but she is bright, confident and articulate. You would never
guess that when she was 18 years old, she left her home in the outskirts
of Accra to live on the streets in the city.
 Despite the fact that it means scrambling to find food and shelter on a
daily basis, many Ghanaian children between the ages of 7 and 18 have
made the same decision. Leaving their homes in rural areas or escaping
from abuse, they flee to Accra in hopes of a brighter future.
Unfortunately, myths of life in the city as glamorous or lucrative all
fall short. The streets are full of children; it is estimated that there
are between 15,000 and 20,000 in the capital alone. Some have homes and
some do not, but the daily struggles that they face are the same—instead
of going to school and learning how to read, these children sell bags of
water or soda on street corners and work to find their next meal.
It was children like these and their heartbreaking stories that tugged
at Kay Bliss ’69 when she visited Ghana with the Rotary Club of Ojai,
Calif. She had come to Accra in 2001 for a polio vaccination project.
Along with her friend Emma Amakye, with whom she stayed, she would spend
long hours into the night talking about the problem of street children
in Ghana. “I just became fascinated, and working with the street girls
became my project,” she explained.
The lives of street girls like Yeboah often take a precipitous turn.
After a couple of difficult months living on the street, Yeboah met a
boy who offered her protection and better access to food, and she
subsequently became pregnant with his child. It was at this point that
she decided to finally acquiesce to the insistence of social workers who
had discovered her and take up residence at Street Girls Aid.
Street Girls Aid was founded in 1994 as a refuge for pregnant girls who
had been living on the streets. Street girls who have children often
leave their babies in the care of “grannies”—older women—while they work
during the day. In the early 1990s, treacherous floods deluged the city
and a number of these babies drowned. Social workers saw the immediate
need and stepped in to create Street Girls Aid through Catholic Action
for Street Children, a West African non-governmental organization. Its
first goal was simply to get the babies off the ground, but the project
evolved to encompass much broader goals: to provide health care for
young mothers and a safe place to keep their babies, to teach literacy
and vocational skills, and eventually to train street girls to have
successful lives.
Bliss learned about Street Girls Aid through Amakye, a Ghanaian lawyer
who serves on Street Girls Aid’s board of directors, and decided that
her Rotary Club should turn their focus toward this issue.
“Kay immediately wanted to go see the girls and find a way to help
them,” said Amakye. She explained that before Bliss took on the project,
the young mothers could only stay in the refuge one month before and one
month after giving birth, due to the size of the space. Bliss persuaded
the Rotarians to raise money for a building three times its size and to
provide equipment for vocational training. Now the girls are able to
stay at Street Girls Aid for six months—three months before their
child’s birth and three months after.
Although Bliss has since moved on to other projects in the area, she was
brought back to Street Girls Aid when she received an e-mail from
another Sagehen.
It was the perfect fit. Kaneisha Grayson ’06, an entrepreneur with an
eye toward fashion and a commitment to social equality, was scouring the
Internet to find out more about Ghana. As the recipient of a yearlong
Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to Accra, she was looking for a Rotary
project to take on. The first hit on her search was Street Girls Aid.
Grayson saw an opportunity that matched her interests and e-mailed the
contact person, who turned out to be Bliss.
“I received an enthusiastic response from Kay saying that not only was
she excited, but she was a Pomona graduate,” said Grayson. “I could see
right away that this was going to be a great opportunity.”
Although she wasn’t scheduled to arrive in Ghana until August, Grayson
was anxious to see how she could get involved with Street Girls Aid even
as she finished up her last semester at Pomona. She expressed this
interest to Bliss, who realized that she had the perfect job in mind.
 The vocational training at Street Girls Aid includes such skills as
cooking, hairdressing, textile dyeing and sewing. Although the training
is meant to encourage the girls to find sustainable employment after
they have moved on from the program, the products that are produced
during training are also saleable.
Bliss described the tablecloths, wrappers, purses and beads that the
girls learned to craft. Ghana is famous for its batik process of dyeing
cloth—a technique that is taken for granted at the local markets in
Ghana, but which Grayson knew had the potential for an international
market.
“They were trying to sell them afterward, but Ghanaians want to wear
American clothes,” explained Grayson. “I knew that something they sold
in Ghana for $3 could sell in the U.S. for $30 or $40.” Although
Grayson, a Black Studies major, has never been trained in fashion
merchandising or design, she knew that she could find a market for the
materials that they were creating with just a little help.
She began assembling a design book, painstakingly cutting out pictures
from catalogues of clothes, designs and items. The women in Ghana were
experienced at creating marvelously vibrant fabrics, but they were
anxious to hear what styles Americans might be interested in purchasing.
When Grayson’s book was completed, she mailed it off to Ghana.
“These 15- and 16-year-old girls were fascinated looking at this book,”
said Bliss of the reaction that Grayson’s work received in Ghana.
“Kaneisha could clearly see how American styles could be translated with
an African emphasis.”
The girls immediately began copying Grayson’s designs, and then shipped
them to the U.S. Bliss arrived on the Pomona campus bearing boxes of
hand-sewn goods from Ghana, and Grayson sprang into action finding
buyers.
“My neighbor Petey Kass (’09) said that his mom owned a boutique in
Santa Monica, so I got in touch with her,” said Grayson. In a few short
weeks, Grayson had made $1,200 in profit for Street Girls Aid—an amount
that equaled three or four times the annual wage of a Ghanaian.
Grayson knew that she had a great venture on her hands, but she wanted
to make sure that it was sustainable. She was only going to be in Ghana
for one short year before heading off to begin her dual program at the
Harvard Business School and Kennedy School of Public Policy. So she
decided to wait until she arrived in Ghana before promising anything
further.
Donning her favorite skirt that the girls had sewn from the book of
designs she had sent, Grayson and a fellow Rotary scholar ventured into
Accra and found their way to the Street Girls Aid site.
“I was so excited to finally see it,” said Grayson. “It was such a calm,
peaceful place. I was very impressed by it.”
In the middle of the day, the space was quiet and somewhat empty. Except
for the pregnant women, who remained in their beds, the other occupants
were out working. The babies were being cared for in crèches, which are
spread throughout the town so that mothers can be as close to them as
possible during the day.
“I didn’t get to be there for their literacy classes or their sewing
classes, but some of the girls were sewing for fun,” explained Grayson.
When the girls noticed the skirt that she was wearing, they recognized
it immediately and remembered sewing ones just like it. They approached
her eagerly, wanting to introduce themselves and their babies, and also
to have their photographs taken. “They were just 16-year-old girls,
normal girls, except that they had babies,” she said. “They were so
genuinely happy to be there.”
Others who have worked with Street Girls Aid similarly remark on the
sincerity of the girls’ happiness and gratitude for the opportunity that
has been provided to them.
“For me the satisfying thing is that I have yet to meet a girl with an
attitude. They are very grateful and they do not take anything for
granted,” said Amakye of her visits to the crèches. “We chat and we
laugh, and they are very trusting and respectful. I think that’s what
keeps us coming back.”
Grayson was introduced to Yeboah and her baby, Vanessa Florence. Yeboah
named her baby after her grandmother, who was also born on a Sunday in
July. It was that same Sunday exactly one year ago that she first left
home and began this new life.
Her story began like that of so many of the girls found at Street Girls
Aid. Grayson and others hope that the endings to their stories match up
just as well, but on other paths: Yeboah has plans to return to school
in order to become a journalist, and she is in the process of being
reunited with her family.
Yeboah asked many questions about the article she was being interviewed
for—in the manner of any aspiring journalist—and again the boundaries
were blurred between the young mother who sells bags of water for
pennies and any college-bound young woman headed for success. Perhaps,
after further guidance from Street Girls Aid, the boundaries will be
erased. |
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