Our Story
Ten years of changing livesWe began by listening to the people of Lawra – and have evolved into a locally-led charity with a model that puts community and local expertise at its heart.
A gathering of disabled children and their families. . . a meeting of people with HIV who wanted to start small businesses. . . a primary school where pupils were too hungry to learn.
In 2012, the people of Lawra challenged everything Sarah Gardner thought she knew about development work. Sarah was a VSO volunteer in the Upper West corner of Ghana, where she quickly realised that real change was desperately needed. A UN Human Development Report had described chronic food shortages and 100% poverty, and she saw it every day. Something had to be done.
“I think what we got right were the fundamentals – mindset, mission, values – and they guided us through the hard times and inspired us in the good.”
Sarah Annable-Gardner MBE, Chief Executive
Karbo Primary School PTA decide to open kitchen, January 2013
One of our first small business owners, Patience, a market trader, granted in July 2013
Action Through Enterprise launched in late 2012, and within months things began to change. Hundreds of children at Karbo Primary studied on a full stomach, courtesy of an ATE school lunch. A groundnut farmer, two weavers and several other businesses thrived on ATE grants and mentoring. And dozens of disabled children attended monthly disability workshops, where every session began with a song.
This was just the start. Supported by funds raised initially from Sarah’s family and neighbours in Ramsbury, Wiltshire, and then from an increasing number of trusts and corporate sponsors, the charity has grown.
Almost 15 years later, we see children who were once so hungry they almost dropped out of school now graduating from university, training to be teachers and nurses and starting businesses with an ATE grant. We see disabled children once written off, now studying or working and playing an active role in the community. We see struggling entrepreneurs and aspiring apprentices now running successful businesses, learning a trade, taking on staff and training their own apprentices. There is action, there is enterprise, lives are transformed.
“I am certain that poor communities will remain poorer without international development, and that with it – done well – it can be a force for dramatic transformation.”
Gabriel Maanibe, Trustee
We now have a local team of over 50 staff – project managers, mentors and cooks – working through rural community hubs where we can have maximum impact. They’re supported by a small UK-based team.
In 2019, we codified our approach as the Hub Model, in which all our programmes are run through village hubs by a dedicated coordinator. Our nine disability groups are supported by specialist staff.
School by school, business by business, village by village, we have expanded our reach: 4,500 children supported though education; 400 people given the tools and funding to learn skills, build businesses and generate income; 800 disabled children and carers brought into the light – 155 disabled children at school! We estimate we have impacted 47% of Lawra’s population. In all, we have touched the lives of 38,000 people.
But there’s more to be done.
Initial training workshop for 13 new business owners, October 2022
King Noah, Nandom Tech and Learning Coordinator, working with children in the Nandom Tech Zone, housed in our Inclusion Centre, 2026
Action Through Enterprise is expanding, rolling out our model of community development and hope across a second district – neighbouring Nandom.
In 2024, we completed work on an Inclusion Centre and Tech and Learning Zone in Nandom, before rolling out our full programme. We now support four schools, three village disability groups and numerous apprentices, entrepreneurs and farmers – with a new hub about to launch.
And it doesn’t end there. With our Lawra and Nandom teams delivering our core work brilliantly, as well as trialling a number of exciting new initiatives, we aim to replicate our model across the Upper West – launching in a third district in 2027.
For fourteen years, we have brought ambition, hope and sustainable change – and we are excited about what can be achieved next.
“I’ve been a supporter for over ten years and I’ve seen ATE develop its own thinking, its own learning, its Hub Model. There’s an opportunity, not just in Northern Ghana but across the poorest parts of Africa, for this model to create more successful communities and give more opportunities to hundreds of thousands of people. That’s a fantastically exciting prospect.”
Sir John Sawers, former British ambassador at UN and head of British Secret Service
Registered Charity: 1149988