How it all begun

William de-Heer Johnson founder of the Lovelace Foundation, established the organisation in 2012 as a non-governmental organization (N.G.O) in Ghana. William was born in Kiev, Ukraine to a Russian mother and Ghanaian father who went to Russia on a Ghanaian Government Scholarship to attain his PhD in Economics.

The family moved back to Ghana where William’s mother became a teacher at the Tema Parents’ Association School while his father worked for Ghana Industrial Holding Corporation (G.I.H.O.C).

William was in Tema Parents’ Association when his parents separated. William’s mother later remarried and relocated to Singapore where she continues to live. His father also remarried a senior nurse, Mary, who headed a clinic at the S.O.S Children’s Village, an international orphanage in Tema.

During his childhood, William spent his time after school helping to look after children at the Martha’s Day Care Centre, a school his aunt Martha owned, and also helped out at the S.O.S. Children’s Village. William attended Adisadel College a secondary school located in Cape-Coast, Ghana. In his third year he became the president of the National Association of Talented Students.

On completion of his secondary education, he sojourned in Singapore and thence to the U.K. where he pursued a Business Studies degree at the University of Greenwich. At this time Mary had left the S.O.S Children’s Village in Tema and started a Kindergarten of her own called the Motherwell School, where William helped with administrative duties whenever he was in Ghana visiting his family.

It was during one of his visits that, William noticed that most schools in Ghana were run down and needed urgent support for maintenance. He also found some parents did not value formal education and would prefer their children stayed at home and helped around the house instead. William learnt that some youth who believed and valued education had to give up their dreams because they could not afford the fees; this was of great concern to him knowing how much he had personally benefited from receiving a good education. Coming from a family of educators, and seeing how education could enable social mobility, better health and prosperity, it was in William’s blood to become a teacher or work within the field of Education.

Determined to improve the reach of education, William established The Lovelace Foundation in 2012, dedicated to empower disadvantaged children and youth through educational and health programmes in all regions of Ghana. This will be achieved by working in partnership with local communities in all ten regions of Ghana, particularly the most remote and underprivileged areas within these provinces.