What we do and why we do it

What We Do, Why We Do It, and Results.

ACRO Ghana exists to unleash the potential of people in communities to make positive change happen. Our mission is to establish, support sustainable economic and social development programs through sports, to have an all-inclusive society to prevent crime and re-integrate those who offend. ACRO Ghana Project delivers on its mission by operating an open community sports clubs, HIV/AIDS awareness activities, school children evening studies, Community Farms, Cultural Troupe that enables project leaders of all groups to access a wide range of support.

The Project, with community leaders, identifies needs that serve social, economic, and environmental purposes and ensures that resources to support these activities yield the desire results to achieve the set objectives. The Project’s activities, therefore, revolve around the principles of individual and community interest, ownership, and transparency, as follows:

ACRO Ghana believes that local solutions to local challenges are often the most appropriate, but these are frequently underfunded, therefore with support, take advantage of available resources to create means to address local challenges. To stimulate the emergence of community initiative, ACRO Ghana works to eliminate barriers to human capacity development. This means that the Project, consistent with its commitment to the bottom down approach strives to find efficient and effective ways to train a diverse set of project leaders throughout established program areas. The Project is committed to transparency of its activities and policies and believes that with that comes accountability.

This begins with a willingness to convey progress findings to all audiences to help inform actions. For example, because donors know the full details of projects they are supporting, and because they can request project progress after making a donation, community leaders face a stringent line of accountability imposed by the Project. At the same time, the Project can deliver on donors’ desires to know how their money is being spent. In addition, random project audits performed by third parties help to ensure that project details and reporting are accurate. Another major benefit of an all interest strategic community is the ability for participants to learn from one another.

ACRO Ghana makes information-sharing between its member groups/constituents a priority. This includes sharing information about project expectations and desires with community leaders, enabling leaders to share best practices amongst themselves, so they can learn from one another’s efforts in solving social challenges. ACRO Ghana works in close collaboration with the Ghana Prison Service. This helps ACRO Ghana to learn more about how the convicts are taken through different stages in their lives in Prison confinement and the various attempts to solve the different challenges facing them.

We basically use sports to attract those who want to re-integrate and with the support of various stakeholders to find solutions. We presented footballs and whistles to inmates of Nsawan Prisons to make them realize that they are loved – not for their crimes – but to encourage them to change their bad behaviors and make them join their family and community as transformed people to do what they can profitably to their community and neighbors. The withdrawal and absence of family support, along with guilt produced by society and neighbors sometimes drive convicts to make new offenses. Convicts tend to feel permanently guilty and unworthy to live in a free society. Past loyalty to crime gangs and unfavorable economic conditions increase pressures and hardships which lead to re-offenses. Our programs plan to integrate them into our sports clubs as a first step to find new friends.

Depending on their skills and interests, ex-convicts can also join the AgriCare and Go Dancing Cultural troupe projects. Within the short space of time, we have expanded to the North and South of Ghana and have sent four coaches to Coaching for Hope, in Burkina Faso for youth and HIV/AIDS workshop training since we believe, our youth are the future and with more and more people contracting Aids, we could not do better than protecting our youth through HIV/AIDS activities.