Charity founded by former Ramsbury teacher in documentary

Provision of daily meal sees attendance rocket at school in Ghana

A CHARITY founded by a former schoolteacher from Ramsbury is to feature in a documentary.

Action Through Enterprise is increasingly gaining national recognition in both the UK and in Ghana.

Sarah Gardner, aged 32, left her job as a teacher at The Winchombe School, Newbury, to help improve the education of poverty-stricken children in Lawra, north-west Ghana.

In late 2012, she launched Action Through Enterprise (ATE) and two months later she had rolled out a programme to provide a daily meal for each child at Karbo Primary School, to get children into education rather than spending days searching for food to feed their families.

The programme has seen school attendance rocket.

Miss Gardner said: “As well as relieving hunger, these nutritious school lunches enable children to learn, giving them a chance to fight their way out of the dreadful poverty they were born into.”

ATE is now feeding more than 850 children each day and this year it expanded its school feeding programme to a third school in a remote village called Dowine.

Meanwhile, there has been a significant increase in weight and height in pupils at Karbo Primary School, located on the outskirts of Lawra Town.

And news about the charity’s work is spreading as it works with the local community to reduce poverty with ATE’s Special Needs Awareness Programme (SNAP).

Now ATE has inspired filmmakers Epiphany Productions, whose team immersed themselves in the community in Lawra for a week to record an account of both Miss Gardner’s and ATE’s work and life in Lawra, largely told in the words of the people of Lawra themselves.

After a London premiere, the full documentary will be screened in the Memorial Hall in Ramsbury on Saturday, May 21, from 6.30pm to 8pm.

The evening will be introduced by Sir Robert John Sawer, who was chief of MI6 from 2009 to 2014.

Tickets cost £3, and entry is free for children aged 16 and under.

These are available at the Ramsbury Post Office and Midway Stores.

Alternatively contact Pip Gardner on philippa@ateghana.org