AfriKids
910. Georgie Fienberg
George Fienberg, from Buckinghamshire, founded the internationally acclaimed ‘AfriKids’ in 2002 and is now one of the charity’s trustees, overseeing its mission of supporting community development in Ghana in order to ensure that every child is afforded their rights as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The charity prides itself on efficiency and was the first NGO in Africa to receive a ‘Third Sector Excellence Award’ for accountability and transparency. Since its inception, ‘AfriKids’ has benefited nearly one million people in northern Ghana by delivering 32 programmes supporting locally led healthcare, education, and advocacy.
Georgie managed the charity’s annual turnover of over two million pounds and her fundraising and donor due diligence from the UK has made these efforts possible on the ground. Under Georgie’s leadership the charity has partnered with both the Department for International Development and the ‘Commonwealth Foundation’, who provided a grant to fund a child protection project.
In a personal letter to Georgie, Prime Minister Theresa May said:
“By founding the ‘AfriKids’, you are transforming the lives of young people in Ghana with locally led community development projects. Your ambitious work has led to the charity being internationally acclaimed for its accountability and transparency.”
Charlie Hays, UK CEO of ‘AfriKids’ said:
“We are proud to see Georgie’s achievements recognised with this award. From humble beginnings, uniting a handful of local heroes fighting for children’s rights in their communities, Georgie has grown ‘AfriKids’ into an award-winning organisation supporting thousands of children and families every year. Today, we are the leading child rights organisation working in northern Ghana and we continue to follow the approach Georgie and our first local heroes developed – we listen to the local communities and empower them to make sustainable changes themselves.
“As our team in Ghana would say, this award will give us more grease to our elbows!”
Georgie said:
“I’m extremely honoured to receive this wonderful award and I do so on behalf of the ‘AfriKids’ UK and Ghana staff and volunteers who work so tirelessly to improve child rights across the northern regions of Ghana. When I started this journey aged 18, the issues affecting the children in rural Ghana seemed so vast and entrenched and I shared these concerns in a letter to a friend. In his reply he wrote ‘one person can’t change the world, but one person can change the world for another person’ – that was the impetus I needed and that is where we started. And we never stopped.”