How We Work
“ATE is an exemplary community development project that empowers all too often neglected and rural communities. Innovative and entrepreneurial ATE promotes sustainable solutions to delivering development at the grassroots and is worthy of support and replication across Ghana and beyond.”
Lord Boateng
Action Through Enterprise has come a long way. From a founder-led charity to a dynamic, growing NGO with a vibrant local leadership team and replicable model, we never stop learning. And our ability to improve on the good, learn from the challenges and weather the storms means we’re stronger – and ready to expand.
We’ve always worked closely with the community, listening to its needs, collaborating on the solutions. Over the years, this has enabled us to develop our work, ensuring resources are spent in the most impactful way. We listened when we were asked to support dry season farmers. We responded to calls to fund apprenticeships. We refocused our activities when the data showed that working in the most rural, remote communities gave us far greater impact.
We listen. We work with communities. We bring change. We call this the Hub Model. . .
We’re keen to shout about our Hub Model: it’s a village-focused approach, designed by local people for the challenges they face every day. The model brings together all our programmes through community Hubs, each with its own dedicated manager.
Most people we work with have complex, dovetailing needs – it’s never just education or just healthcare or just lack of food. This all requires an integrated, intensive response, and that’s what the Hub Model provides.
By supporting communities in their entirety, we maximise resources and ensure accessibility. Households benefit in multiple ways, enabling them to overcome entrenched layers of poverty and creating a wider, longer-term ripple effect – improving life and creating opportunities for individuals, families and the community as whole.
We’re not alone in the small international development sector in delivering a range of services – but our Hub Model makes us innovators, with unique reach in rural communities.
With our Hub Model, everything is achieved in lockstep with the local community – it doesn’t work any other way. This is not the kind of development which is ‘done to’ people – this is long-term, sustainable development, led by the needs, skills and input of each community it touches.
Our most recent Hub launches in Lawra District – in Tanchara and Kalsagri – were led by our local team, tailored to local needs and highly successful. Sustainable, self-strengthening, empowering – our approach makes every penny/cedi count, ensuring limited funds have maximum impact.
With our plan to make our programmes accessible across Lawra district completed two years ahead of schedule, we are now replicating our model in neighbouring Nandom – with ambitious plans for further districts, in the Upper West and beyond.
“We still work like we started – burning passion, mission-driven and closely learning. One strength of ATE is the ability to reflect on our programmes and to help one another grow. No one is left behind.”
Gabriel Maanibe, Strategic Advisor
Registered charity: 1149988