The City of Refuge Children’s Village outside of Tema, Ghana is a safe house for children rescued from child labor camps. Began in 2007 by Johnbull and Stacy Omorefe, the Refuge is steadily filling with children who once worked as modern day slaves for fisherman in the Lake Volta region of Ghana. Child slavery is rampant in the Lake Volta region of Ghana. “Children were everywhere we looked. In every canoe on the lake there were two or three young boys casting nets or pulling them in. Their eyes hollow, their stomachs distended and their muscles overdeveloped,” says Stacy Omorefe. Children are often sold into slavery by single mothers who simply cannot afford to feed them. They grow up without education, without love, and without hope. For a few fortunate children all that is beginning to change. With organizations like the expanding City of Refuge, which has a history of support from Semester at Sea students, young boys and girls sold into slavery are being rescued and given the opportunity to once again live their childhood as children.
