James Kofi Annan. And his
NGO Challenging Heights.

Sold at six

James Kofi Annan was born into a large, poor family on the coast of Ghana. At the age of six, he was sold into the country’s fishing industry on Lake Volta.¹ For the next seven years he labored as a child fisherman across more than twenty villages along the lake—paddling, hauling nets, and diving into the water before dawn—beaten, underfed, and cut off from any childhood at all.

The escape—and teaching himself to read

At thirteen, James escaped. He returned home unable to read or write, years behind other children, and with nothing but a refusal to accept the life he had been handed. Working for a living, he began to teach himself. He caught up, went on to college, and rose—improbably, completely—to become a manager at Barclays Bank of Ghana.

The fact that he could neither read nor write
did not stop him from following his dream.

From Barclays to the fight

He could have stopped there. A stable career, a salary, a way out earned against impossible odds. Instead, James resigned from Barclays to devote himself fully to children’s rights in Ghana. Despite repeated death threats from those who profit from the trade in children, he has never stopped his work to free child slaves, nor his campaign to end child slavery on the lake.

Challenging Heights

In 2003, James founded the NGO Challenging Heights.¹ It rescues children from forced labor on Lake Volta, runs a recovery shelter and school to help them heal and catch up, and works upstream—with parents, fishermen and whole communities—so that fewer children are ever sold in the first place. Within its first four years, the organization had helped liberate some 500 children.¹

“The children are empowered to refuse to be trafficked, the parents are empowered to protect their children, and the fishermen know that it is wrong to enslave children.”

That is how James describes the work—not as a raid, but as a change of mind across an entire community. Today, fewer fishermen on the lake have the opportunity to enslave children, because more children refuse to go and more parents refuse to sell them.

Recognition

James’ work has been honored around the world. He received the Frederick Douglass Award from Free the Slaves in 2008,¹ and in 2013 he was nominated for the World’s Children’s Prize—the so-called “children’s Nobel”.² Challenging Heights has won a string of further international awards for its work protecting and empowering young people.

His is the story Fisher of Kids was made to tell—and the reason the film still matters. To support his work directly, visit Challenging Heights.