The cycle of poverty is a downward spiral. Weakened by hunger, its victims lose the strength to work and with it the ability to feed their children. The desperate search for sustenance keeps children away from school and the opportunities that education might provide for a better future. In this way the scourge is passed on from generation to generation.

The Prem Rawat Foundation's model Food For People (FFP) program is helping to break that cycle in poverty-stricken villages in India and Nepal. Building on these successes, TPRF has dedicated $250,000 to begin work on a new FFP facility in rural Ghana.

FFP's mission is to provide assistance to people in need while respecting their dignity and giving them hope for a better future. The approach is to build clean, efficient kitchen and dining facilities near schools, where children and needy adults can get clean drinking water and hearty, nutritious meals prepared from traditional recipes of their culture. Local leaders are included in the planning and design of these facilities.

FFP Ghana will be built in the village of Otinibi, near the capital city of Accra, on land provided by Chief Nii Kweidza Mansa III. The soil in Otinibi is poor, and in recent years has not even supported subsistence farming. Villagers must walk more than three miles to find work breaking up rocks for road-building, and not everyone is strong enough for this.

Chief Mansa, who has witnessed the exploitation of many West African tribes by Westerners who took their tribal lands and reneged on promises of helping the villagers in return, said that at first he was leery of TPRF's proposal. Upon being assured of TPRF's transparency and unblemished track record by officials of Prembaf Ghana, the local charity overseeing the FFP project on site, the chief expressed "utter delight" that the project will be coming to his village.

With groundbreaking planned for sometime in February, the project's first phase is already under way. This includes getting approval of architectural drawings from local authorities; clearing the site with a bulldozer, wheel loader, and trucks; constructing a temporary site office; and other pre-construction groundwork.

Thanks to the FFP programs in India and Nepal, attendance in local schools is burgeoning. Adults are regaining the strength to return to work. Better hygiene practices are helping to reduce disease. Desperation is being replaced by hope.

In Ghana, the seeds of hope are already being sown as excitement for the project builds, says Kafui Esi Adjei, a member of the local FFP management team. An Otinibi farmer whom she interviewed beamed when he told her, "We are happy even more than the word itself!"