We can save children

Ghana 🇬🇭 “I was actually doing executive close protection for a VIP family from Sweden and they had been building infrastructure throughout East and West Africa primarily in Ghana and Kenya, clean water; agricultural land; shelters; sewage; schools. We were in Ghana at one of the NGOs called Challenging Heights and we just happened to be one day visiting a shelter where children had just been rescued from child slavery from Lake Volta. There were 15 children sitting on stone steps, most of them boys aged between 5 and 15, and the look in their eyes, it's always stayed with me. They had these cold emotionless shark’s eyes and you could see the kind of trepidation you know, the terror. I've never seen the look before, sure you can walk the streets of any city in America, even pre-Covid, but certainly now, and there’s homelessness, poverty, people without food. But it's a whole different situation when you realized that these children were trafficked, were sold into slavery, some tortured, that's a whole different thing.

Many slave masters come to Senya in Ghana, to either buy or kidnap children to take to Lake Volta.

During this early rescue and recovery mission to arrest slave masters, at the 11th hour, the government shut us down and all we could do was watch as children were taken.

This little boy sitting on a step was nervous but probably was taken along with two girls who were sitting clutching hands behind him.

It's one thing when it’s done to adults but at least maybe adults can try to defend themselves, if possible. But children, there’s just no possible way, they're innocent so it struck me to the depths of my core. And I started getting emotional, I kind of had to look away, and of course here I'm doing this job of protecting these clients. But that look stayed with me and I wanted to know how I could get involved. So trial and error, through colleagues at the United Nations in New York, because I lived in New York 17 years, and just reaching out to people, people reaching out to me and basically just my kind of personality, I just started saying: “You know what? I'm going to go visit these places to see how I can help.” So I went to as many orphanages, refugee camps as possible and I kind of started circumnavigating the globe from Thailand to Cambodia to Myanmar crossing from east to west Africa.

Sapa in Vietnam

With two girls from the Hmong indigenous community, walking them to school.

Karbala in Iraq

A children's orphanage built with money donated by the Arab community in Michigan, USA.

Nimule in South Sudan

The heat was a stifling 106F degrees on Christmas Day. How were the little boys was able to walk without footwear and carry a 40lb Jerry can?

Beddawi Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon

Teaching martial arts to the female middle school students at one of 12 camps in Lebanon. 30,000 men women and children live here.

Ibrahim

An 8 year boy whose father was a Syrian soldier killed early in the civil war. His mother escaped from the ISIS onslaught. He was left being taken care of by his grandfather who physically abused him. But we was able to locate his mom in Homs and reunite them.

Before I started my own foundation, We Can Save Children, I started helping with donations and especially in terms of rescue and recovery of trafficked children which at any given time there’s like some 30,000 children enslaved on Lake Volta in the fishing industry.  One of the initiatives I want to work on and have been working on, especially with this past year and having time to really map out everything, is to start a kind of sports education school in Lebanon, in the refugee camps. There are a lot of buildings, old hospitals, old schools that can be renovated and used to bring in students, especially the Palestinian refugees which there are hundreds of thousands inside Lebanon, this is something that I really would like to make happen.”