Wulugu, a village in the far north of the Northern Region of Ghana, is extremely remote and difficult to reach by road. It's also tremendously poor: over 60% of the population live in poverty. Girls face a bleak future, and are forced to leave school and home to go and live in the Southern Region.  

There, they take menial jobs and face a lack of accommodation and food. They are far away from their families and vulnerable to human traffickers and men who offer housing, are forced into prostitution and to hand over their earnings. Many sleep on the streets. Many more contract terminal diseases and barely get back to their villages to die.

Teachers, meanwhile, assigned by the government to work in the Northern Region (an area about 27,000 square miles, thus larger than, for example, much of New England – or three times the size of Wales), often see it as a punishment. 

Teachers are expected to work without pay for considerable stretches. Food shortages are frequent, there is often no electricity, a lack of medical services, poor roads, and water comes not at all or in long-lasting and destructive floods.

Housing, too, is scarce. Women teachers assigned to the region can be forced to live with local men, taken as an extra wive and abused. Many run away. Without teachers, schools close and children lose their education. It spirals on and on and down.