Every Child Deserves a Seat at the Table
A visit to a small farming community in Ghana’s Central Region reveals a simple, urgent need and inspires MKF’s first project of 2026.
By the Michael Kunke Foundation | Elmina, Ghana
ABEYEE, Central Region, Ghana
The road from Elmina narrows before it ends. Past the junction at Ayensudo, where market women arrange fruit pyramids in the early morning light, the asphalt gives way to red laterite dust. Villages appear and recede. A farmer shoulders a hoe and walks toward an unseen field. The day has been awake for hours.
It was along this road, on a working visit to Abeyee a small farming community in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) Constituency that a team from the Michael Kunke Foundation (MKF) came to understand what a proper meal break really means for a child.
The Drive
The team departed Elmina with Henry Amartey, School Improvement Support Officer (SISO) for the Agona Circuit and Chairman of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) in KEEA behind the wheel. The 40-minute drive was unhurried, the morning air still carrying its overnight coolness. At Ayensudo, the team stopped at the roadside market. The bargaining was brief and good-natured. Fresh fruit was procured at a fair price, and the drive continued.
A little further on, a group of school children passed in the opposite direction on bicycles, uniformed and unhurried, navigating the laterite track as if it were a highway. Then came the usual markers of rural Ghanaian mornings: women with headloads, men in gumboots, the smell of cooking fires from behind compound walls.
Arrival in Abeyee
Abeyee announced itself the way most farming communities do with movement. Life here begins before sunrise and shows no signs of slowing by mid-morning. Men with machetes and hoes headed to their farms in small groups. Women balanced basins. The community was already deep into its working day.
The team’s vehicle was brought to a brief, unplanned stop when a herd of sheep crossed the track, bleating without urgency. A group of young men leaning on their motorbikes nearby watched without concern. In rural Ghana, the motorcycle-for-hire has become the primary connector between villages faster than walking, more flexible than a minibus, indifferent to road conditions.
At the school, the team was received by Eric Warden, headmaster of Abeyee M.A. Basic School. After introductions in his office, he led a full tour of the compound.
The School
Abeyee M.A. Basic School serves approximately 400 learners across its primary and junior high school levels, the only public school for the community. The tour began in the lower primary classrooms, where teachers were already working through their morning lessons, young children attentive at their desks.
The team noted some infrastructural gaps: windows missing from frames, doors absent from doorways. These are issues, but manageable ones. By the standards of rural school infrastructure across the Central Region, the school was holding its own. What the team found at the end of the tour, however, was not something they had anticipated.
“This is the very experience the young learners go through every single day they come to school.”
The Open Table Project
The last stop was the school canteen. By then the mid-morning sun was sitting directly overhead, unforgiving. Sweat broke on foreheads within minutes. The structure designated as a canteen, a deteriorating lean-to at the edge of the compound, offered no shade worth speaking of, no seating, and no surface on which to set down a bowl.
Then the bell rang, the quiet of the school compound, birdsong, the hum of a lesson from an open window, the distant sound of the village broke instantly. Children poured out in every direction, converging on the canteen area with bowls already in hand. The gossip came fast, the laughter louder. They caught up on everything that had happened since yesterday.
And then, bowl in hand, each child found a place as best they could. Some squatted in patches of shade. Some walked back to the veranda and sat on the bare concrete floor. Some found a spot on the school field, balanced their meals on their laps, and ate in pairs or alone, as the sun continued its work.
Leaners on break, squatting and having their meals.
The MKF team watched and made a decision. “This is the very experience the young learners go through every single day they come to school,” the team noted. The children were not without food. What they were without was somewhere to sit and eat it with dignity.
The project that followed was named directly from that moment: the Open Table Project. The name is both practical and intentional. The aim is to build a proper canteen space, one where every child at Abeyee M.A. Basic School has a seat at the table.
The Project Takes Shape
Back in Elmina, conversations began with MKF’s main funding partner, RazorSpire (Ireland). Following those discussions, the implementation process was agreed upon and the project formally approved.
As with every MKF project, the first engagement was not with a contractor or a supplier. It was with the community. The School Maintenance Committee (SMC) and the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) were convened. This step is non-negotiable in MKF’s model: the community identifies its contribution to the project, agrees on the modalities of ownership after handover, and takes on formal responsibility for maintenance from the outset. When MKF leaves, the structure does not belong to MKF. It belongs to Abeyee.
From Right – Left: Henry Amartey, Michael Kunke, William Manford Okine, Francis Kweku Dum (SISO – Komenda Circuit)
The team subsequently engaged the KEEA Education Directorate, meeting first with Dr. Isaac Mepenodo, Deputy Director in charge of Monitoring and Supervision at the Ghana Education Service, KEEA. The importance of the directorate’s direct involvement in community school projects was discussed and agreed upon. A further meeting was held with William Manford Okine, SISO for the Ayensudo Circuit, alongside Henry Amartey.
All parties aligned. Everything required to begin was in place.
A New Start
The Open Table Project is MKF’s first project of 2026. Construction will proceed within agreed timelines, with community involvement built into the build process from day one. When it is finished, 400 children at Abeyee M.A. Basic School will have somewhere to sit, eat, and be children in the shade, with their classmates, at a table.
It is a small thing, as these things are sometimes described. It is also the kind of thing that, once you have watched a child squat in the dust to eat their lunch under a midday sun, does not feel small at all.
Get Involved
Volunteer
Want to be part of the Open Table Project or one of MKF’s other active community programmes? Volunteers are welcome. Email: info@michaelkunkefoundation.com
Support the Work
The Open Table Project and MKF’s wider school infrastructure, digital literacy, and community welfare programmes are powered by partner funding. If your organisation is looking for a credible, independently verified NGO partner in Ghana, we would welcome the conversation. Email: info@michaelkunkefoundation.com
Expedition & Programme Partners
MKF is actively developing partnerships with international expedition companies and volunteer travel organisations. If you run student expeditions or community-focused travel programmes, Ghana’s Central Region offers something genuinely distinctive. Get in touch to explore a partnership. Email: info@michaelkunkefoundation.com
Dare to Dream. Make a Difference.
www.michaelkunkefoundation.com | +233 (20) 5182 573