Atsu, Epitomised talent, humility, compassion , ATSU (1992-2023)
Was his support for the Crime Check Foundation, an NGO in Ghana in crime-prevention advocacy and the reintegration of ex-convicts into society.
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For five years, he worked with the NGO on their Petty Offenders Project, by paying fines to secure the release from prison of 163 people incarcerated for petty crimes and helping with capital to support the reintegration of 46 of them into society.
The Founder of the Crime Check Foundation, Ibrahim Kwarteng, told the Daily Graphic that it was Atsu who first reached out to his NGO and assisted it to secure the release of 163 petty offenders and also get 46 of them reintegrated in to society.
“He also partnered us to provide educational support for children, as well as helped in the release of medical prisoners (people ‘imprisoned’ at healthcare facilities for their inability to pay for their bills),” Mr Kwarteng said.
Until his death, the football icon was championing the passing of a non-custodial sentencing law in Ghana to help decongest Ghana’s prisons and also to find alternative punitive measures for petty crimes.
At the late footballer’s one-week observance, broken-hearted Steven Appiah, an ex-convict and a beneficiary of Atsu’s benevolence, spoke about how the deceased paid a fine to secure his release from jail in 2017 for a petty crime.
In a tribute, the Ghana Prisons Service noted how the late footballer had supported reforms in the country’s prisons by personally financing the grading of the
Awutu Camp Prison park and donated food items to the prison.
He also purchased a drilling machine for an inmate of the Kumasi Central Prison.
For Mr Kwarteng, one of the best tributes Ghana can pay to the late footballer is for the passage into law of the non-custodial Bill currently before Parliament which he proposed must be named after the footballer in honour of his effort to ensure reforms in our prisons.
An ambassador for global children’s charity, Arms Around the Child, since 2016, Atsu was the main sponsor of a new school building that is nearing completion at Senya Beraku, and visited the children and the project site on several occasions.
He had planned to inaugurate the building in June this year at the end of the European football season.