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A Ban Against Neglect (ABAN) is a registered non-profit organization based in Accra, Ghana, that recycles plastic water bags into bags and accessories. The main form of safe, clean drinking water in Ghana is sachet bags, bags that are like sandwich-sized plastic bags filled with water. Since there is no formal waste collection, over 60 tons of these bags are thrown into the streets every day. Every night, over 30,000 youth fall asleep on those same streets. Over one third of these youth are young mother's and their babies. Gender-based discrimination, lack of family support, financial stability and marketable skills make these street girls some of the most vulnerable in Ghana and contributes to the growth in second-generation street children. ABAN seeks to address these two main problems.

History
ABAN was born when its three founders, Callie Brauel, Rebecca Brandt and Emmanuel Quarmyne met at the University of Ghana in 2008. As an exchange student in Accra, Callie was bewildered by the vast amount of litter and number of homeless children that she saw on the streets. She met Emmanuel in a non-profit management class, and together they created a mock organization for recycling the city’s street litter.

At the same time, Callie began volunteering with Catholic Action for Street Children, where she met Rebecca Brandt. This organization focused on helping Accra's homeless street children, but the two women realized that the doors at CAS closed at 5 p.m. and the children would return to the street.

Emmanuel, Callie and Rebecca decided to take action to solve both the environmental problems they saw and the problems facing Accra's street children. From this, ABAN was created. They began training homeless adolescent mothers to produce up-cycled products out of littered plastic.

ABAN won $15,000 in seed money through the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill's Carolina Challenge, through the Kenan Flagler Business School. This money allowed them to register as a non-profit and recruit its first class of 12 young mothers, called apprentices.

In August 2011, ABAN increased the size of the program to include 20 apprentices and lengthened the program to two years

Programs
ABAN fights the neglect facing both the girls and the environment. ABAN provides the girls with shelter, seamstress training, Business, English, Math, and Life Skills Education, and the means to save, matching their individual savings upon graduation. Through seamstress training, the girls learn a marketable skill by sewing recycled sachet bags into unique, handmade products.

ABAN currently has 20 apprentices in their two-year program. This June will mark the first graduating class from ABAN's two year program since its beginning in 2010.