Foundation crippled by weekend robbery

The Young Heart Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that seeks the welfare of widows, orphans and other under privileged groups of society, has had to stop two main projects due to the theft of funds meant for those projects.

Mr Desmond Bress-Biney, the project coordinator of the Foundation, told the Daily Graphic that the burglary of their Madina office, which involved $8,600 and €14,300 for two separate projects and another sum of GH₵28,000 meant for rent payment for their premises, was realised when workers reported for work last Monday morning.

He explained that the sums of money were taken from the bank and left in the office last Saturday, as they had to make payments very early on Monday morning, by which time the banks would not have opened.

Other items that were found missing were listed as eight laptops, three video cameras and a Samsung tablet as well as hard copies of project documents. He said soft copies of the documents were secured in a central system and so could be retrieved.

Effect of theft
Mr Bress-Biney nonetheless indicated that as a result of the theft of the sums of money, the two projects – a support project for widows at Agona Nkum in the Central Region and a Women’s and Children’s Rights project that had already started had to be put on hold.

“What happened has really affected our activities. Everything that we do is dependent on money and also we put smiles on the faces of people in a project at Agona Nkum but this unfortunate incident has prevented us from doing that,” he said.

He disclosed to the Daily Graphic that so far the Foundation had more than 150 widows it was assisting and therefore appealed to the general public to help them find the burglars and to continue their work.

Mr Bress-Biney said within the past years, the YHF, which was established in 2011 had organised a series of health programmes, supported the Madina Police and provided a maternity block for the Madina Polyclinic among other social interventions.

The organisation is also interested in girl child education and in persons living with HIV/AIDS.

Touching on how the theft had affected workers of the organisation, Mr Bress-Biney stated; “Today is not a happy day for us at YHF. It has been our work to put smiles on the faces of people but this weekend we have been hit by an unfortunate incident which took away the beautiful smiles on our faces when we left the office last Friday.”

The District Crime Officer at the Madina Police Divisional Command, Detective Inspector Anganchab Kofi Begum, confirmed that the incident had already been reported to them and investigations were already underway.

Writer’s email: edmund.asante@graphic.com.gh