Juliana Ashaley

Lost Paradise | Safe Haven Barge

“If you were to dive clean into its centre at the hour when the water’s blackness is not separate from the earth’s night, you could disappear 70 metres beneath gentle waves and still be above sea level, still be touching the root of a full-grown tree”. – Jeremy Snell, 2020

Globally, millions of people are trafficked. The West African country Ghana is not an exception and has also been experiencing internal trafficking of children, especially around the area with the largest man-made lake. Research in Lake Volta's fishing industry has documented cases of child trafficking, where children work for wages that rob them of their childhood. Among the reasons for this is the lack of access to quality education and poor health care systems.

Several covert barges would patrol Lake Volta in search of trafficked children working in harsh conditions. Its mission is to provide medical aid to both physically and mentally ill trafficked children in order to house them in transitional homes for three to six months. It will also work closely with law enforcement, non-governmental organizations, and forensic architecture team to track and trace them back to their original villages and in safe environments.