About The Founder

I am Gordon Redgrift and am blessed to be the founder of the charity Medical
Interventions for Disabled Children in Africa (MIDCA).   
  
Originally born in Scotland, as a young boy in the early 1960s, I relocated with my parents Bill and Pauline and my siblings to Buckinghamshire in England.   
  
For most of my adult life, I have been employed in the construction industry, and so have no medical knowledge. However, through Divine Intervention, I have been fortunate to be guided towards engaging with and harnessing the medical expertise of others to ameliorate the lives of many, many disabled young people and children in African nations.   
  
It can sometimes seem that the establishment, purpose, intention, goals,
accomplishments and ambition of MIDCA have all gently unfolded like the
interlocking pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of life. However, on reflection, I now
recognise that it has come to fruition through Divine Intervention.   
  
I would like to take a moment to share with you how these events came to pass – and to acknowledge the faith, kindness and trust of key individuals who God has chosen to play their role in His Intervention.   
  
In 2010, I started attending a Ghanaian church. A few weeks later I had a vision; I clearly saw and experienced a vision of myself being surrounded by Black children.   By 2015 this vision came to pass and now I realise that what has developed since this time has become my calling.   
  
It had been my plan in 2015 to travel to Ghana with the purpose of visiting some orphanages. Although apprehensive, as I had never voyaged to Africa before, I made arrangements to go and see the OSU in Accra and a school for the blind in Kumasi.     
  
Only ten days before I was due to travel, a work colleague phoned me to say that she was watching a television documentary about disabled children in Ghana. Instantly, I switched on the television and watched the documentary made by Sophie Morgan, a British disability advocate, who is herself paraplegic.   
  
The programme explored the view that Ghana was deemed to be one of the world’s worst places to live with disability – and featured the sterling work of The Physically-Challenged Action Foundation (PCAF) rehabilitation training centre in Offinso and The Orthopedic Training Centre (OTC) in Nsawam.  
  
Whilst the documentary was shocking, sad, touching and poignant, more importantly it was my first introduction to the work of the founder of the PCAF, the truly inspirational Mr Barimah Antwi. I made contact with him, and he generously invited me to visit his centre as part of my proposed trip to Ghana.   
  
I travelled to Mr Barimah’s PCAF immediately after having happily visited the
government-supported Osu Children’s Home (OSU) in Accra, where I had found the orphaned children were well-dressed and the living conditions were pleasant.  
   
I discovered that the contrasts between the OSU and the PCAF were striking.  Here at the PCAF, despite the peerless, impressively outstanding and masterly care being carried out by Mr Barimah, I observed disabled children who were facing hardship and suffering, living wretched lives, and enduring not only adversity but also intense unhappiness solely brought on by society’s ingrained attitude towards their physical condition.  
  
Mr Barimah is a remarkable individual whose kindness and compassion towards his fellow human beings is boundless. I have the upmost admiration for all that he offers to children living with disability.   
  
A two-hour visit to PCAF – and ten minutes in his company – changed my life
forever.   
  
In that short period of time, I was surrounded by over fifty children with all forms of disability the likes of which I had never witnessed in the UK; children with arms and legs missing, some crawling, some with enlarged heads, some disfigured. It pains me to say that some of this was hard for me to look at. However, I instantly knew that this was the vision of five years earlier.   
 
It is my profound belief that it was my destiny to go and support Mr Barimah in order that I learn about children afflicted with disability. And the blessings of just being together with him, learning alongside him and benefitting from his knowledge, meant that I learnt a lot over five years. I remember (and always will) him fondly; his compassion, his exceptional humanity and his exceptional kindness. 
  
I returned eight times to that centre, where support was being delivered in very many different ways. Moreover, throughout  this time, I gained insight into learning and appreciating that if you truly want to understand need and what it takes to  really help others, then you have to live in the same humble conditions and witness their environment from the minute you rise in the morning until you go to bed in the evening - as I did on many occasions.   
      
In 2019, I visited the OTC to see a young girl we had helped through corrective
surgery. On arrival, I was greeted by an American lady who I instantly recognised as someone who had appeared in the 2015 documentary. Then all fell into place - that this was not coincidental.  On reflection, I now know the television documentary was Divine Intervention and the phone call regarding it was God’s indication that I was meant to work with Mr Barimah. 
  
The companionship, loving trust and effective working relationship offered to me by Sister Elizabeth Newman has sustained me as I have striven to learn and
understand the challenges and needs of these children and their families;
offering me hope and encouragement through all that I had witnessed.  
 
Around 2020, because of Covid-19, the whole world went into lockdown, and we had to draw a line in the sand with what we had achieved up to this point. As the pandemic receded, Sister Elizabeth Newman recontacted me in 2021 to enquire how I was. She mentioned that help was needed to support children who had undergone medical procedures that allowed them to walk without pain and discomfort. She asked if I was interested in raising funds to help facilitate this work. A small community group (GIHOC) was formed. Between then and July 2024, thirty children benefitted from operations funded to correct bowed legs, to perform amputations, to fit prosthetic limbs and to treat hydrocephalus.  
 
Since 2024 the work of MICDA now encompasses Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and
Tanzania. 
As well as the surgical procedures we have already been undertaking, we have now established club foot programmes in all four countries. 
  
I am thankful for the Divine Interventions and to the people who believed in me, and above all I thank God for using me to change the lives of children through opportunities that, until this point, were only their dreams.