From Ghana to P.E.I., Equality Project aims to prevent homelessness through community programs
- Judith Mendiolea Lelo de Larrea
- Apr 20
- 7 min read
Originally published by The Guardian Apr 17, 2026
The field was still in shadow when the first child appeared. Then another. And another.
From the edge of the road, Michael Redmond watched them emerge slowly out of the dark, small figures walking alone toward the pitch. It was just after 5:30 a.m. in Tamale, Ghana, and the sun had not yet broken the horizon.
By 6 a.m., the light would come. By then, the field would already be alive.
“They’re not being driven by mom and dad,” he said.
They came on foot, some from miles away, cutting through narrow paths and quiet roads, arriving one by one with the same purpose. There were no uniforms, no sideline parents, no equipment bags. Many did not even have boots.
They came to play.
‘They all came’
Redmond, from P.E.I., had just started a football program coaching girls in the African country where cultural barriers sometimes prevented their participation.
He arrived in Ghana in 2019 with the intention of becoming involved in humanitarian work.
“Well, the girls want to play. I said ‘fantastic. How are we going to make it work?’” Redmond said. “They all have to work at the market at seven… we’re going to practise at six. They all came. Every one of them came.”
He contacted friends back home to help secure equipment. He later started another program, Yumba, for children with mental disabilities.
One day, a boy came onto the field.
His name was Mohamed. He had no use of his legs and one working hand.
The other children were already playing. For a moment, no one moved.
“What are you going to do?” Redmond’s wife, Aleida, asked.
“We’re going to put him in goal,” her husband said.
And they did. Mohamed smiled and the game continued.
Learning goes both ways
In Ghana, the barriers were visible. In P.E.I., they are quieter, but no less present.
“It taught me more than it taught them. The only barrier here to them participating is me and my head. It’s the same here, like our barriers to sport and inclusion are things that we put in place, right? As opposed to … with the kids, cause kids didn’t care, he just wanted to play.”
“And I thought, you know what I read that situation so poorly, but it challenged my own thought processes, right, of what inclusion looks like, what opportunity looks like. And that’s simply what we tried to do.”
That moment stayed with him.
That experience now shapes a growing network of programs across rural P.E.I., where Redmond’s organization, The Equality Project, works at the intersection of housing, justice, mental health and community development.
Health consequences
In recent years, the organization has taken on the operation of an emergency shelter in Summerside and supportive housing in Charlottetown, expanding from a volunteer-based effort into a team of more than 40 staff.
But the scale of the work is not what defines it. If anything, Redmond is more interested in what happens before someone ever needs a shelter bed.
“We need to do more up front so we don’t have these health consequences at the back end,” he said.
For him, homelessness is not a single issue but the end point of a chain, one that often begins quietly, years earlier.
It is a model built on a simple premise: that instability is cumulative, and that prevention has to begin long before it becomes visible.
Combination of factors
According to the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, in research on pathways into homelessness, it is often the result of a combination of structural factors such as housing affordability, systemic gaps in support and individual circumstances that accumulate over time rather than a single triggering event.
“If you enter one of those spheres … you’re going to touch several. You’re interconnected,” Redmond said.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, in its research on the social determinants of health, factors such as income, housing, education and social inclusion interact in ways that shape long-term health and social outcomes.
Mental health, addiction, poverty, justice involvement and housing instability rarely exist on their own.
More often, they build on one another, each gap reinforcing the next.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studies on adverse childhood experiences have found that early exposure to instability, poverty and stress is associated with increased risks of mental health challenges, substance use and long-term health issues later in life.
School gyms, parks
It is in school gyms and community fields where Redmond’s approach is most visible.
“You have to deal with children. You have to deal with families, because those children will be the next generation of kids who are addicted or have poor mental health or are on the streets,” he said.
At Vernon River Consolidated School, that philosophy translates into after-school soccer, ball hockey and informal drop-in programs, free or by donation. There are no forms, no income requirements and no screening.
“When you tell somebody to come in and put your situation on a piece of paper, that’s a barrier… it’s a form of trauma,” Redmond said.
Instead, children simply show up.
“No, you don’t have to qualify. You can just come.”
The simplicity is intentional. In rural communities, where distances are long and services are limited, access is often the deciding factor.
“Take the program and put it in a community, as opposed to telling the community to go to a program,” he said.
Rural family life
For Louis and Anneke Wilken, that difference is immediate.
“We’re only five minutes from the school… so that’s great,” Louis said.
The family moved to P.E.I. from South Africa five years ago, leaving behind a farming life shaped by instability.
“The crime and stuff just got too much … the country is quite volatile,” he said.
They settled first in Belfast, then in Vernon River, where both their sons now attend school. Like many rural families, daily life is shaped by distance, about half an hour to Charlottetown, limited facilities and overlapping schedules for children after school and in the evenings.
According to Statistics Canada, people living in rural communities often face greater barriers to accessing services, including transportation challenges and fewer available programs.
“You have less options in the rural areas,” Wilken said.
That reality often determines what is possible.
“You don’t have to travel after work really far … two spots at the same time, it makes a difference,” he said.
Building a community
For Anneke, the impact extends beyond logistics.
“It helps us to maintain our sanity as well,” she said.
Winters on P.E.I., she explained, can be isolating, especially for newcomers adjusting to a different climate and pace of life. Programs like these offer something steady.
“It’s like a social event,” she said.
Parents stay, talk and help set up and take down equipment. Sometimes they join the games. On some evenings, RCMP officers play alongside children, reshaping relationships that might otherwise feel distant or intimidating.
“When you connect with a child and a family, now you have a bridge,” Redmond said.
That connection is the entry point.
“If kids are busy and they’re exposed to more things in the world, there’s less opportunity for harms,” he said.
In practice, the programs become more than activities. They become spaces where families meet, where needs surface without being asked and where support can happen without formality.
According to data from Statistics Canada, employment alone does not necessarily protect against financial insecurity or housing instability, particularly as the cost of living continues to rise.
For families like the Wilkens, that sense of connection is what turns participation into belonging.
“It’s an opportunity to meet more people,” Anneke said.
For their son, LJ, the experience is simpler.
“I think it’s really fun to play games at our school,” he said. “Every moment is my favourite moment.”
The lesson is simple, but it reflects the structure around him.
“You can’t always score by yourself … you have to pass your teammate.”
‘A good, prosperous life’
For Redmond, those moments are not secondary outcomes. They are the work.
“You can impact so much with a child by the simplest of gestures of connection, of play,” he said.
Because beneath the surface of participation are the conditions that shape long term outcomes, including isolation, food insecurity, financial pressure and uneven access in rural communities.
None of them appear all at once. But over time, they accumulate, often unnoticed until the consequences are harder to reverse.
And if they are not addressed early, they carry forward into systems that respond only once the damage is visible.
“Our mandate … is for everybody to live a good, prosperous life,” he said.
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