The centre was established in La, one of the poorest inner city areas of Accra, by Billa Mamud in 1998. Billa, having grown up within this community, became increasing aware of the amount of street children and orphans in the community who weren’t attending school and were working or simply roaming the streets. Seeing this need he decided to start an education programme to help these children and enable them to obtain an education. However, when Billa established the project there were no financial grants or support available and therefore the teaching took place under a mango tree.

Since those early days the project has developed significantly:

Site 1: Mango Tree- This where it all began. At first Billa would gather 5 children each morning to teach them under the tree. Before long he had 35 children attending each morning and so he moved to his next site;

Site 2: Bigger Mango Tree- The increasing number of children attending the classes meant they soon out-grew the first mango tree, but as there was still no financial support available to Billa he had no choice but to simply move to a larger mango tree. Teaching under this tree he had up to 55 children attending.

Site 3: Small covered area- In 2005, having been running the project under a mango tree for 7 years, Billa had the means to be able to rent a small covered area. By this point he had 80 children attending daily.

Site 4: Covered teaching area with 4 classrooms- In August 2008 the project moved to its current rented premises, which has four good sized covered classrooms, enabling us to teach the children in a much more spacious and comfortable environment.