Education
For young people who want to continue their academic journey.
Father in a Friend · Kumasi, Ghana
Your future should be your choice.
If someone gave you the opportunity today, which path would you choose?
Our first chapter
$1,000grant secured
4young people supported
3different pathways chosen
- 2 chose vocational training
- 1 chose entrepreneurship
- 1 chose nursing education
What freedom means to us
Freedom is having a real choice.
Too often, opportunity is defined narrowly. A young person is told that success means following one particular path.
We see it differently. University can be a powerful opportunity. So can learning a trade. So can building a business.
Father in a Friend exists to help young people work out what they want their future to look like, and to give them practical support to move toward it.
Vocational training
For young people who want to build practical skills and careers through a trade.
Entrepreneurship
For young people who want to build something of their own.
“Different paths. Equal dignity.”
Wesleyan Microgrant · Summer 2026
Four young people.
Four choices.
When Father in a Friend received the Wesleyan Microgrant, we did not decide what success should look like for the young people we supported.
We asked them. Their answers were different, and that was the point.
Select a card to see the path that person chose.
Four people did not need the same opportunity.
They needed the freedom to choose.
“Our job was not to choose their futures for them. Our job was to help make their choices possible.”
Where we are today
Small on purpose. Honest about it.
$0First grant secured
0Young people supported
0Pathways chosen
Our work is just beginning. These numbers represent our first cohort, not the limit of our ambition.
An exercise
What would you choose?
You are eighteen. Someone offers to support your next step. What would you choose?
What would help you most?
Your choice
You said you would choose your own path, and that what would help most is support.
Now imagine someone telling you it was the wrong path.
We don’t believe anyone else should decide what success looks like for you.
Nothing here is stored or sent anywhere.
Freedom is choice.
And a real choice needs someone in your corner.
Pathway explorer
One mission.
Many paths.
Every young person we work with starts in the same place and ends in the same place. What happens in between is theirs to decide.
Select a pathway to explore where it leads.
These are examples of directions a young person might take, not a fixed menu of programs we currently run.
How it works
From choice to opportunity.
Five stages. The first one is the one most programs skip.
Stage 01
Listen
We begin by understanding the young person — their goals, interests, circumstances, and the path they actually want to pursue.
Stage 02
Choose
Participants are not pushed automatically toward university. Their chosen path may be education, vocational training, entrepreneurship, or another practical opportunity.
Stage 03
Support
We help identify the training, educational, mentorship or financial resources that move that specific goal forward.
Stage 04
Walk together
Support continues through community, mentorship, check-ins, workshops and future opportunities. A grant is a moment; mentorship is a relationship.
Stage 05
Give forward
As the initiative grows, participants will have opportunities to mentor, train, employ or support the young people who come after them.
Beyond the grant
Opportunity needs community.
Financial support can open a door, but young people also need people who keep walking beside them once it is open.
Father in a Friend is building an online community where participants stay connected to mentors, peers, opportunities and future workshops.
Mentorship
Consistent guidance from people willing to listen, encourage, share experience, and help young people navigate decisions that matter.
Community
A space where young people build relationships with peers and mentors rather than facing major life decisions alone.
Well-being
Future workshops and conversations on confidence, identity, resilience and healthy relationships.
Father in a Friend provides mentorship, community and peer support — not professional therapy or clinical mental-health treatment. Where someone needs clinical care, we help them find an appropriate referral.
What we are building
Support that grows into opportunity for someone else.
We want to move beyond paying for training and then sending young people out to look for opportunities alone. The long-term vision is an ecosystem where participants learn a skill, gain experience, earn income, and eventually create opportunities for the people who come after them.
This describes our long-term vision. Programs will be introduced gradually as funding, partnerships and capacity grow.
Why the name?
A father can mean more than a title.
For many young people, what matters most is having someone who listens, encourages, guides, challenges, and stays present.
Father in a Friend was created around the belief that mentorship and community can help fill some of the guidance gaps young people experience, while respecting every person’s own family story.
We are not trying to replace anyone’s parent. We are trying to make sure fewer young people have to navigate important decisions completely alone.
“Sometimes what changes a life is simply knowing that someone is in your corner.”
In the field
Our first chapter, in photographs.
On camera
Moments from Wesleyan Microgrant.
Filmed on the ground in Kumasi during Summer 2026. Nothing here is staged.
Who we are
The people behind Father in a Friend.
Father in a Friend was started by its three founders and is still run entirely by them, alongside a wider group of volunteers on the ground in Ghana.
Meet the Team
Afia Animah Fosu
Founder & Executive Director
Baidawu Iliyasu
Co-Founder & Operations Director
Chris Ohene Boadi
Co-Founder & Partnerships Director
Get involved
Help a young person choose what comes next.
Your support can help expand vocational training, educational opportunities, entrepreneurship support, mentorship, and future community programming.