Sometimes I wonder how much of who we become is effort and how much is access.
What does a life look like when you are born into a place where education is fragile, clean water is not guaranteed, and dreaming feels impractical? Where the future isn’t something you imagine, but something that simply arrives and happens to you.
These questions have stayed with me since my visit to the non-profit, Friends of Adaklu in the Volta Region.
I’ve thought about young girls growing up in communities where poverty is normalised, where early motherhood is common not by choice but by circumstance, and where ambition is quietly dulled by the limits of daily survival. Not because there is no intelligence or talent but just because there is little exposure to alternatives.
And yet, what fascinates me is that, there is joy.
There is laughter. There is play. There is a lightness that exists even in the absence of material comfort. It makes you pause and question the assumptions we often carry — that happiness is something money or material comfort alone provides. It reminds you that joy is deeply human, and far more resilient than we give it credit for.
Still, joy alone is not enough.
What stays with me most is the understanding that people in underserved communities are too often framed as problems waiting to be fixed. They are spoken about in needs. In lack.
But they are not problems.
They are possibility.
They are potential waiting for access: access to education, to healthcare, to clean water, to electricity, to safety. These are not privileges. They are basic rights. And when they are present, imagination expands and creativity becomes alive.
A child begins to picture a life beyond what they see every day. A young girl starts to believe she could become something other than what circumstance has prescribed for her. That belief alone can change a life.
This is why the work of organisations like Friends of Adaklu matters; not because they “save” people, but because they offer a hand up, not a handout. They create the conditions for people to reclaim their voice. They make dreaming possible.
With opportunity, there is no limit to what someone might become. Not because everyone must escape where they are from but because everyone deserves the freedom to choose who they become.
As I look ahead to 2026, this is the vision I’m holding on to.
That with time, resources, networks, and intention, I find myself increasingly in positions of service. That I’m able to contribute in meaningful ways - not loud or performative but deliberately. Creating access where it doesn’t exist. Opening doors where talent would otherwise stall. Helping ensure that creative potential doesn’t die quietly simply because the conditions to nurture it were missing.
I often think about how many dreams don’t fail because of lack of talent, but because of lack of access. And I hope that the work I do, the platforms I build, and the communities I engage with become part of changing that story.
I can’t answer all the difficult questions these reflections raise. Some realities are too heavy to resolve. But I can sit with gratitude for access, for education, for community, for mentorship, for the quiet privileges that have shaped my life.
This year, I hope I can contribute, in meaningful ways, to creating pathways where dreams are not dismissed as unrealistic, but nurtured as possible.
Because dreams only die from lack of access and not from lack of talent.
Access changes everything.
Inspired by my Visit to Friends of Adaklu
Written by Bentuma Arthur