By Emily Mukasa

As a pleasant young man growing up in Ghana, Edwin Vanotoo watched the suffering that street children faced. The children risked kidnapping and hit-and-run accidents because of their vulnerable position on the streets, as they sold trivial items like toothpicks and ice water to earn money.

He vowed to do something about it.

“Edwin had a dream in which he was taking care of the fatherless and street kids. This dream stayed with him for quite a long time,” said Vanotoo’s wife Linda, a medical doctor in Ghana, during a recent visit to Denver.

In the late 1980s, Edwin Vanotoo studied business and communications at the University of Denver and worked as a student intern in the office of Dennis Chrisbaum at that time. The two stayed in touch over the years, and when they met again in 1998, Edwin shared his piercing story with Dennis, as well as his desire to help street children in the future. Vanotoo’s dream finally came true in 2003, when he and Linda started the Chosen Souls Center (CSC), a non-profit organization in Ghana that would help rescue street children from lives of hardship and limited opportunities.

Shortly thereafter, in the fall of 2003, Dennis, his wife Nancy, Rosalind “Bee” Harris (publisher of the Denver Urban Spectrum), and several other individuals with an interest in Africa formed the Colorado-Ghana Children’s Fund (CGCF) to the support Vanotoos’ dream. The CGCF is a non-profit, grassroots organization with an all-volunteer board. Of all funds raised and expended during 2006, 96 percent was sent directly to CSC to support the street children, enabling them to get off the streets, return to school and face a brighter future.

The CGCF/CSC effort has been able to support 35 children between the ages of 6 and 18, all of whom continue to live with guardians, or typically a single parent, but who also reach out to CSC workers with questions and problems and for ongoing financial and emotional support. The children are enrolled in primary, middle and secondary schools, depending on their ages, where they take classes in mathematics, English, social studies and science, or they are provided vocational, on-the-job training if they are older and wish to develop a skill such as sewing or design.

“With the support from the CGCF, we are able to provide them with everything for school,” Linda Vanotoo said. “We buy books, shoes, school uniforms, bags and personal items for the girls. If a parent is not in the home, someone from CSC is available who is interested in their well-being.”

At the CSC, children get counseling about teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. Linda Vanotoo also carries out the physical examinations and most medical treatments for the children.

In order for the Vanotoos to ensure excellent performances by the CSC children, they send a “field officer” to attend each school’s parent-teacher meetings and discuss a child’s performance and attendance record. “The officer discusses their academic progress with the teacher so as to decide what kind of help a child needs if any,” Linda Vanotoo said.

She announced that this will be the second year that children from the CSC program will graduate from secondary school. Of the three students who will graduate in June, she hopes that at least two will be able to qualify for university in the fall, since she believes education is the key to success in any culture.

The Vanotoos and the CGCF recently decided to help the children further their education by helping them attend a vocational or university level school. Most of the children enrolled now want to pursue professions like tailoring, accounting, reporting and nursing.

“Educating children to secondary level is not enough for them to earn jobs,” said Linda Vanotoo. “We want to take them to a level after which it is possible to have a job, whether it is in sewing, accounting, nursing or being an auto mechanic.”

“I am amazed at what a small amount of money can do,” she added. Dennis Chrisbaum from the CGCF says that it only costs a couple of dollars per day for these children to eat, attend school, have medical care and not have to work on the streets, allowing them to face a future with greater hope and one with growing opportunities.

Editor’s note: For more information about CSC or CGDCF, call Dennis or Nancy Chrisbaum at 303-202-1979 or visit www.cgcfund.org.