23 Sep Multiplying Impact with The JayNii Foundation

Sarah and Cale are two of our recent Wandering Samaritans and are career-break travelers from Seattle, Washington, USA. They planned and saved for 5 years and finally took the plunge to quit their jobs and travel for a year. They started in Europe; hiked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, then made their way via Morocco to Ghana. They are presently traveling through Croatia and plan to go to Southeast Asia before flying home.

Think this career break couple is excited to be Wandering?

While in Accra, Ghana, they ran into the JayNii Streetwise Foundation, an orphanage and school run by a local couple (Jay and Nii) and started 7 years ago. JayNii has 25 orphans living on site, and another 25 that just come for school since they don’t have enough space for everyone to sleep. In addition to providing room and board to orphans, they also teach all their kids drumming and dancing, and they travel to perform and help support the foundation.

The JayNii Streetwise Foundation in Accra, Ghana

Sarah and Cale went to JayNii for the first time one weekend and read books with a few of the kids. They discovered there was a festival going on the following weekend and knew that a ton of people would be in the Jamestown neighborhood. JayNii needs funds to build more school classrooms, as well as sleeping quarters. Since that is a larger endeavor than TWS could offer at the moment, the idea came to purchase the drinks for the festival weekend so JayNii could put 100% of their sales into this larger goal. JayNii is partially supported through donations from a local church and dance performances, but also supports itself through drink these sales and events held on their grounds. Cale and Sarah purchased drinks and loaded as many as they could into the bar fridge and awaited the guests.  They even guest bartended and helped market the event to their communities in the area!

Wandering Samaritans / Guest Bartenders…love it!

The event was a huge success.  Customers were generously paying extra money for their drinks as donations to the orphanage.

The kids at JayNii put on a drum and dance performance and invited everyone to join in the dancing.  All in all, we were able to turn our 261 Cedi payment into 943 Cedi over the weekend (That’s $78.30 into $282.90). Jay and Nii were extremely happy, as were we!

Yet another example of individual travelers partnering with local NGOs to create tangible impact in the communities they visit! I think they agree!

Thanks to your generous donations to The Miracle Bank, we were able to make an even bigger impact than initially imagined.

Donate today and help make it happen!

And you can follow their travels at www.twopairunderwear.com