Moved to Ghana from UK and now owns this massive school

I moved to the UK when I was eight and a half and the transition was incredibly challenging. I knew very little English so I in fact went to learn English in the UK. It was during a period where the racism was quite high. Previously education in this part of the world was very much a dictatorship whereby the teacher is seen to be the superior and what the teacher says goes. I'm very fond of saying my knowledge and exposure and experience is not necessarily needed in other parts of the world that are developed but here in Ghana it's absolutely needed. Meet Diana an incredible woman who about 20 years ago left the UK behind and made a bold decision to move to Ghana. Fast forward to today and Diana is a proud owner of Little Angels Academy, a school that has grown from a backyard playgroup and now serving hundreds of students with diverse developmental abilities. In this video we dive into her story and explore the heart and soul behind Little Angels Academy. As always you will be inspired. Don't think about the comfort or all the negativity that you may have heard. In my migration to Ghana I've never looked back. When I look at the lives that I've touched, what I've been able to achieve within this period of my life, there's no way that the West would have appreciated my skills and my experiences. My name is Mickey, keep watching. Yes my name is Diana and I'm the director of Little Angels Academy which is a basic school established in the garden city of Ghana Kumasi. I moved to UK when I was eight and a half so I was quite young and the transition was incredibly challenging. If you can appreciate at a point when I moved there I knew very little English so I in fact went to learn English in the UK and it was during a period where I don't know whether I should say the racism was quite high but with not being able to express myself. The Catholic school that I was enrolled in which I will not mention the transition made it very difficult for me because being outside London there were very few black people, very few black people within the community that we lived in but anyway I was enrolled in a mixed school and it was tremendously challenging because if you can appreciate children are children. They may not necessarily want to be spiteful, it might not be intentional but based on what they've said, what they've heard or what they've seen on the television and things like that, there was a lot of bullying that went on when I was younger but what helped me was I was incredibly tough. Oh I was so tough so I used to I recall more often than not my mother was always called to the headmistress's office yes to have a meeting about Diana but you know we managed to scale through and then once I became fluent in English I was there was a period when I joined the mixed school the Catholic school I had to then be detached because the speech or the English wasn't coming as quickly as we expected so I was enrolled in another special school that helped with foreigners to learn English and then I came back to the Catholic school. So like when you talk about racism in your from your point of view what do you think it was was it because of ignorance or what do you think contributed to the kids bullying you? I think it's the fear of the unknown because if you can appreciate the community there were very few black people and very few young black people in fact I was the only black person in the school for quite some time and it was quite alien for for me as well to be able to determine what it was that they were trying to say but when somebody is being hostile to you being aggressive or saying unkind things even with a language barrier you know and I knew so I was constantly fighting with them I'm talking fist fights yes yes absolutely that was the the only way but once I was able to overcome and the overcoming came as a result of me being extremely good at certain sports and that helped to I used to do track and field so I used to do 100 meters the relays so in those kind of sports everybody wanted me once I became the language barrier everybody wanted me to be on their team when it came to activities such as swimming however oh no because you know it's not for us swimming is not for us yes okay so when I was when I was leaving Ghana in my 20s in my little world I thought it was a privilege how does it feel like for young people like yourself eight living did you see that as a privilege did you feel that oh I'm going to the land of opportunity and when you got there how did that hit you? okay so I had it was very difficult for me to imagine what I was going to meet and the hostility I wasn't prepared for even within the community I wasn't prepared for for that level of resistance from some of the people in the neighborhood but with that said on a whole people were were either friendly or they just left you to your own devices and so I didn't really have a lot of aspirations but it was more like a the excitement of a new chapter adventure that was very much there but everything else was extremely alien to me the weather the kind of elusiveness of some of the people you know as Africans we are so open we are we just welcome everybody but to be in an environment whereby you go you come you close that took some time for me to adjust to yes okay so now you've you found your feet you know you are now the athletic girl that everybody wants to be yeah you know so what how did that so from there what what happened and why did you decide to come back? It gave me the athletics gave me a platform really to prove that yes I can do something I am not excuse me to say stupid I am not you know a monkey like some of the the comments that you will you will hear on the streets from just random people I'm not stupid we don't live the life of you know the Tarzan and Jane kind of environment so many people and it's pure ignorance so many people are of the view that that is what how is portrayed on television is how Africa really is and so to to get to overcome that the athletics gave me a platform to have the mindset that one must be able to excel in whatever one is good at in order to be accepted so from the word go I decided whatever I do I must give it 101 in order to not only to be accepted but to be respected to overcome this kind of stigma that if you're not careful psychologically becomes a part of you and there was no way I was going to allow such comments to dictate my future at all so I was very much determined to succeed so upon finishing school and my my dream was to become a fashion designer so I was able to get scholarships into some of the top fashion houses in in Milan I had offers for Milan I had offers for Paris I had offers for US some of the universities in US so I remember presenting my dream to my mother who was absolutely horrified she said what how many black people do you know in this industry and at that time there were none I knew no black person that was really making it in a fashion industry that I could say yes I'm mirroring my life onto this person and that killed my dream completely and so beyond that I entered into the corporate world and I was working in finance KPMG in London and yes I made a success of that and of course that also posed certain challenges you know in a corporate world it's not all that is cut out to be there are some areas where as a black person a black female entering into such an environment you really have to prove yourself and of course that presented its own challenges but I was able to overcome with the support of my partner at a time and so I continued from one finance company to another until I reached a point where really I wanted to settle down and have a family but there was one thing I didn't want to do was to have to raise my my family in the UK for that I really did not want um I didn't like the hostility my son is mixed race and I didn't want him to be kind of exposed to certain stigmatization and exclusions but moreover I wanted him to know his culture I wanted him to be exposed I wanted to protect him from violence and you know kind of unpleasant scenes and I also wanted him to have the space so that he could grow free independent without you know any fear and and also appreciate his culture so at the point of deciding to to move to Ghana and I must say I must admit it didn't just happen overnight it was orchestrated because prior to the relocation my partner and I were always visiting Ghana on an annual basis and everybody has what they identify as home and for me it was the smell of the runway the tarmac when the plane was landing at Kutuka it was just home to me so whenever I yes as soon as I smell that that heat and the sound of the crickets I'm like yeah I'm home oh yes it becomes evident in the way that you feel the joy that you feel inside and so for at least five years I did that annual trip and whilst we were doing those trips my partner and I were looking at business opportunities what is available in Ghana what can we do and we agreed on travel and tourism Ashanti African Tours so it was actually Ashanti African Tours that when I had my son we came with and we established it it was it still is it's still running now extremely successful business that has won numerous awards I'm no longer a member co-owner but my ex is still operating it very very successfully all around Ghana and other parts of Africa you always had it in mind that you're not going to work for someone you work for yourself in Ghana or was it just by accident was it in it was a part of the plan to just start a business oh absolutely absolutely working for somebody else was never on on our agenda at all it would not have worked it would not have worked I think what travel gives you is an exposure and you must use that exposure very well to impact so in having that opportunity of being raised in the west educated in the west and then going back or coming back to work for somebody else in what capacity would you would you work for that person when you see all around so many opportunities that really enable you to not only make a very successful living but also for you to be impactful with with the knowledge that you have gained okay for somebody like myself who's lived in the UK for like nearly 18 years I think more than that since 2005 okay right and I'm coming I'm thinking of coming what would be your advice what would be your advice like the sort of mindset how should I see things so that I'll be able to survive in Ghana um technology is awesome and now it has paved the way for everything to be at our fingertips when I migrated it wasn't like that and I'm talking about 20 years ago it wasn't like that at all you really had to kind of dig dig deep to get any kind of meaningful information that wasn't political wasn't um you know about the the struggles of of Africa and things like that so for us we were researching it wasn't the information wasn't readily available as it is now so I would advise anybody to really research and research well um have in mind your goals what is it that you want to relocate for what what are the the core things that are driving you to leave um an environment that has infrastructure that has rules everything in in its place and a place for everything it has order you you appreciate the do's and don'ts to coming into an environment where really uh it's like we are almost scrambling what is it that is is driving you to want to be in in that yes what is your purpose and for me it was always a desire to come back home I never really saw um the west as my home no I appreciated that with the family that I have that I would one day return home for good and that in returning home I have to return to give something back what is it that I want to do how do I want to transform things how do I want to make a change and it's not about being a martyr it's not but it's appreciating that I've had this opportunity the opportunity has paved way for me to see things from a different angle how can that knowledge that experience be shared with others how can I impact it so with the with the travel and tours it wasn't really fulfilling what I wanted to do at that particular time I didn't know that education was an option for me entering into an education field was an option for me I never planned it but I realized that with with me bringing my son um back then the schools were not as they are now talking 20 years ago nearly um you've been in Ghana for 20 years nearly yeah and so with with coming here with a young child my son was nine months and I wanted him to be enrolled in like a like a nursery some kind of a you know play group kind of environment where he will mix with others and it will also create a social opportunity for me in fact I combed the length and breadth and I realized that such a setup wasn't available I will have to travel as far as tech in order to to take my child to a school that I thought yeah okay this borders on how I want my child to be raised the kind of information that I want him to be exposed to the kind of caregivers that I wanted to handle my child and the distance was just too far so I met during that quest two other expatriates one was a Brazilian lady married to a German the other was a German doctor married to a Ghanaian and both their children were of the same age as my son so we decided we are all in the same boat we are all not satisfied with what we are discovering so why not just set up our own play group so we started taking it in turns you know during the week and the two of them will come here with their children the next few days we will go to somebody else's house and the three of us were just basically rotating and we structured our own kind of activities that bordered on the kind of Montessori type of activities that we wanted our children to to be involved in so we incorporated things like music, cooking, life skills, it was more like learning through play and gradually people were phoning me madam we hear you've set up a school we want to come on board no I haven't done that and then I realized with time that the story was becoming more frequent and I was having to explain more and more to people that no it's not a school oh but but we would just like to come and join you so we started with the three of them became six three from the police officers children and then from six it just escalated to the point where I had no option but to really register as a school and that is how Little Angels Academy became a school education was not at the forefront of my mind I fell into it but in falling into it is me realizing that yes there is a niche there is a need I can make a difference I can impact and it's the perfect opportunity to really make a difference in the lives of so many people so many people and to control people you control the education so yes if you want to make an impact in Ghana yes it's from the foundation level from the foundation level and and I must admit over the years and the work with which we have been doing the the feedback the recommendations and the drive of people into the school has really affirmed that this is the perfect field for for me so how was it like how was the process like you know registering it and scaling it to this level because to be honest when I see little angel on your whatsapp I didn't think it's it was very interesting that there isn't a manual that walks you through such a transition you you really have to kind of dig through things to find information and it was always amazing to me how there isn't like a business manual that will walk you through the registration process or the the the governing bodies that you have to associate yourself with the the rules and regulations there's nothing like that so you have to really go out there and and find out you have to talk to other people that possibly have either done it before or I know somebody who has done done it before because ignorance is not bliss there is no excuse for it so in terms of registration you have to ensure that you register with the right bodies you have to ensure that you form allegiance with with them really and there'll be so many kind of situations whereby you would it's not like that oh god why is it like this why is this taking so long by now it should have happened why do I have to pay excess is somebody trying to uh trying to kind of uh cheat me out of out of money now things are more streamlined but back then it really wasn't it wasn't uh so there were times that um you know mistakes were made and then we learned from them the the the hard way but in all of that is it's a learning process you must be extremely open-minded before you take such a step yes be be open-minded don't have expectations that are so high and we we must move away from the comparisons the compare if you continue to compare in all honesty if you're not careful you will just you will give up in the early stages um now things are much easier things are a lot more straightforward so how was it how was it like your transition how was it and I want to know did you come with a lot of money or a lot of ideas I came with one idea and the one idea was for the establishment of the traveling tours but the intention was always to uh expand on to other things beyond traveling tours you could look at hospitality as a whole having accommodation um you know looking at the restaurants um looking at clubbing activities that one can also add to the to the tourism aspects so um there were a lot of options that I recall we we listed them down my partner and I um listed them down and the idea was to work our way through them but uh to be honest with you I think the process with which we went through was the very best the opportunities are so many that if you're not careful you will either miss some or you will become overwhelmed in trying to fill every hole you cannot so appreciate what your interest is what is your passion what is your drive um and then start on that and you realize that along the way other doors would open and then you can you can venture in in those areas as well so at the beginning I said that I wanted to go into um fashion of which my mother was like no nursing medicine is for you so therefore that is an area that you must you must concentrate on which has never really been an interest of mine and I did not go down that road at all um but with me not pursuing the scholarships that I was offered for uh for Paris and and Milan and US I I now do fashion and design I have my I do I do I have models uh so I've been able to establish a modeling uh house and a fashion house uh by taking the children through the process so we started using the children that were interested and the parents that wanted their children to to be trained on the runway we started training them and the school has also paved the way for for us to be able to incorporate not only academics but entrepreneurship which is my very strong field uh business establishment business startup so in addition to that has been the establishment of a consultancy whereby those that are interested in in you know business startups I'm able to what take them through the processes they use um as I said the the opportunities are endless but it must be the passion that will lead you and as the passion is leading you doors are opening and more opportunities will flood in so we'll come back to the school but I want to ask quick it looks like you started a lot of businesses in Ghana is it easy or difficult to start a business in Ghana oh it's much easier than people think it's much easier where the challenges are is having the right resource the staffing you must make sure that um certainly they are well trained uh you must get an agency that will be able to handle recruitment for you um successfully and you must ensure at all times that monitoring and supervision is there I think that is one of the areas that a lot of people wanting to migrate or taking the steps and then realizing that it's not easy I think that's where they fall short you really must be very uh strict on what it is that you expect your customer service uh your staff must appreciate uh the rules the policies uh they must be well trained and you know again the years of experience has enabled me to be able to offer that support to some of the the companies and and business startups because you know applications are being dropped all the time but qualifications alone is not enough they may be well qualified but you put them on the field and you realize that they lack the human element customer service is is a huge issue in our parts of the world and so in order for you to get the best and to be able to maintain and sustain your clients you must have staff that are well trained and think along those lines that you you you do uh I always use a particular restaurant in in UK I use that as uh advice let me guess is it McDonald's oh no no no oh my god it's not McDonald's at all this is a you know like one of these um posh restaurants and the customer service there is second to none from the moment you enter the car park you have somebody there to open the the restaurant door for you you are greeted with a smile um you know you are welcome so you you can go away spending so much money but because of the service with which you have received you don't even think about it you recommend them over and over again and you continue to visit um but you compare that to some of the the restaurants that maybe you may have visited here in in Ghana and you realize that oh my goodness me during the travel and tours phase obviously we visited so many uh restaurants so many hotels to vet their services and I mean I was left wondering can we really do this can we really do this but what helped us was by establishing a connection with the management we started advising guiding maybe you should train your staff in this area when we bring visitors it's not good for them to witness this it's not good for them to to hear this and therefore and I think it has helped so how do you get so it's it's a it's a thing that how you start a business and the local workers will collapse it for you and all because of their mindset that's what people say how do you get local staff to change their mindset to think the way you think um I look at it in the same way that we are developing the the children it will not happen overnight you have to constantly constantly revisit you know you don't compromise on anything this is how I expect things to be run and therefore I will offer you training as soon as you hear something that is untoward you have to nip it in the bud you can't leave it at all and it is difficult when you're starting a business particularly here in this part to detach yourself you can't afford to you must have your eyes everywhere and you have you must have your ears to the ground as well you must always be ready to train always be ready to advise in in some cases is because the individual doesn't know hasn't had the exposure that that you have had so when you talk about customer service they may not comprehend where you're coming from you have to be able to train that person and if along the way you realize that the person is not ready to comply it's not ready to follow your rules you be prepared to let them go don't keep anybody on for nothing no don't be emotional no don't attach emotions to business at all when I first came I was doing very much that because I had so much empathy for young people and I compromised so much but I realized that not all of them are ready to accept not all of them are ready to learn and in situations like that you have to for the sake of your business you have to be willing to to let them go and the ones that are willing to um to adhere to what your policies and rules you you go with them you train them so what do you look at when you are recruiting what are maybe three things that okay um here we put a lot of emphasis on certificates but I've also been known to say to so many people you can stick your certificate on the wall and look at it but for you to come and work here I expect x y z I expect you to be hard working I expect you to be committed I expect you to appreciate the rules and the policies that govern where you are at and I expect you to be on time punctuality in this part we've become so accustomed to Ghana man time no there's no such thing as Ghana man time is what we have accepted that is not acceptable and it has become a norm but if I want you or I expect you to report in at seven o'clock at seven o'clock you must report in not 10 past not five past and if that is the case I will penalize you and over here people um feel the pinch of the pocket more than talk in so many cases talk is cheap let them feel it financially so you put uh policies in place whereby you will deduct them if if they are late and if the person continues to be uh non-punctual then you need to let them go and recruit somebody who would be on time before we go outside I want to ask why Kumasi why Kumasi and I'm I'm an Ashanti girl yes I'm an Ashanti I was I was born in Kumasi and I've always had a deep love for for Kumasi for Ghana as a whole but Kumasi is is my my base um Accra is too congested for me it's a little bit too cosmopolitan where uh Kumasi is still rough it's still ragged it has all the elements of being indigenous and I prefer that very much we still have that friendly uh family orientated environment and the culture and the culture is awesome you can't beat it yes um in the school's establishment at first it was uh from the crash to um basic four which is reception or just above reception in in UK um but now we are up to junior high jhs3 which is for those teenagers early teens 14 15 years and what we what we do is we prepare them to be able to write the standardized west african examination which and since the school's establishment and that's migrating onto the junior high level I'm happy to say that our results continue every year to increase get better and we've got our students entering into some of the top top secondary schools here in Ghana so our success stories are great they are immense recommendations from parents both in Ghana and outside of Ghana means that our population level keeps going up but because we are Montessori based school it means that we work with a minimum ratio of students pupils to facilitators so what is Montessori based school so Montessori is very much where the child is not educated through the traditional way of the two and four but it has to be an opportunity that allows the child to actually determine what it is that they are learning so in in all the activities that take place the children must be very much involved they have to be seen to be using their their cognitives effectively they have to have an input in what it is that they are learning they must enjoy learning they are given opportunity to express themselves have an input in their environment what is going on around them previously education in this part of the world was very much a dictatorship whereby the teacher is seen to be the superior and what the teacher says goes it's not like that anymore so what's so unique about Little Angels what is unique about Little Angels is the fact that we've created an environment that is totally holistic for children's development it is it is an environment that encourages the openness of learning it gives them the opportunity to have an input in what they are learning but we also go beyond that we have merged the entrepreneurship programs with the academic programs so here we teach beading we teach fashion we teach modeling we teach music we have a recording studio for those children that are interested in music to be exposed to not only the singing aspects but the writing of music composing of music but there are also those that teach sound engineering then of course we do the the same program but for us we call it STEAM which is the science technology engineering art agriculture for agribusiness interest and the mathematics as well so it's a very broad program that exposes children to all aspects of entrepreneurship it shouldn't be that the individual will finish Little Angels Academy go to secondary school go to university and become an unemployed statistic it should never be the idea of bringing such programs on board is so that by the time the child finishes or the adult by that point finishes university they should be able to turn the skills learned acquired into their own businesses and I heard you also work with kids with special needs as well oh yes we we are an inclusive school so since the school's establishment back in 20 sorry 2008 yes we have always been an school so we deal with conditions such as autism ADHD we have down syndromes we have deaf students currently assistants we have three sign language interpreters that interpret the academics for the children with the view that they will be able to progress through the school and actually write the standardized BEC exams but then when it comes to conditions such as autism ADHD and so on and so forth not all of them will be able to go through that same trend so for them we offer their academic opportunities if they are able to follow but it goes at their own pace so we put together individualized educational plans for them and then they are given a facilitator who works with them to go at their own pace but in addition to that we also have the TVET which is the technical department where the individual can learn beading can learn fashion if they are into technology then they can go into the stream program okay so this is their sensory room it was important to create an environment whereby when they are having a meltdown they will be able to come and just chill so this was a wonderful initiative by a philanthropist by the name of Miss Caroline Conroy who lives in the UK she's a very good friend of mine and she said Diana you need to have a sensory room for the children so that they can go and melt down and she did all this created an infinity mirror for us and she's been such people really helped to make the job worthwhile because in having this sensory room it means that the children have somewhere when they are going through a meltdown to just come and mellow look at the lights relax have some soft music played for them and it calms them down children have the opportunity to do exploration work and what you're seeing and there are some also in motion now is looking at our ancestral culture belief which if we are not careful will fast die out so the children are exposed to how other spiritual beliefs and other christianity and other religions have come on board and they are dominating some of our traditional beliefs but irrespective of all of that you know this is our culture it's not it should not be overridden by superstition and other religious beliefs whether to travel or not to travel do you think you moving out of Ghana and coming back the fact that you moved has helped you definitely to travel absolutely to travel but the advice that i give to young people that have the aspiration of traveling is when you are going go with an open mind go with the the knowledge that you're not going to make that your home it's not going to be your base but whatever opportunities will be available to you whatever you learn bring those skills the knowledge back with you to Ghana and in doing so you will also what expose other people to the benefits of of travel but you will expose them in areas of employment in areas of knowledge sharing in in areas of um you know just helping to elevate somebody else's life so i'm not the kind of person that is against travel at all it really is an eye-opener and it creates tremendous opportunities for for people but what i don't support is when the travel becomes or when the country becomes your permanent base when it's like that i'm very fond of saying that my knowledge and my knowledge and exposure and experience is not necessarily needed in other parts of the world that are developed but here in Ghana is absolutely needed you can make far more of an impact you can make far more of a difference in Ghana than you will do anywhere else how do people find a school okay so we we are directly behind the Patasi police depot which is a big training ground for the police the Kumasi Ashanti region police so we are directly behind it it is located at off Adrasi road which is Patasi so if you say little angels academy anybody would know where it is but we are also on social media from facebook to whatsapp we have a website we have all the tiktok and all the other social media handles that you'll be able to get more information in addition to that my the the number the the main number comes directly to me as the director of the school and the number is 0247043096 that's 0247043096 we have tremendous tremendous opportunities that are available to young people and there's no group of persons that we have left off we've covered all including those with disabilities or challenge we prefer not to look at them as disabilities but rather it is an ability everybody has a role to play in wherever they find themselves ours is to help them to uncover their skills their interests their capabilities their love and that's what we do do you still have any tips for people who are thinking of moving to Ghana yes i do do it do it be bold don't be afraid don't think about the you know the double triple figures don't think about the comfort don't think about the lack of infrastructure or all the negativity that you may have heard in my migration to to Ghana i've never looked back and when i look at and okay it's predominantly because of the area that i'm in but when i look at the lives that i've touched when i look at the young people that i've had the opportunity to meet to even just talk to share my experience interact advise and guide in any way shape or form there's nowhere that i would have had that opportunity what i've been able to achieve within this period of my life there's nowhere that the west would have appreciated my skills and my experiences but in coming here in establishing this i've been able to grow as a person i've been able to appreciate so much i've been able to achieve so much and the children now look upon such achievements and then they have aspirations as well to want to do bigger to want to do better to want to be more impactful to not just that but to actually also care about their environment their community