FROM SUICIDE TO PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE ( How my life was transformed by testimonies from FGBMFI)

My name is Eric Nartey founder of the WIFI community.

Several years ago I attempted suicide because my life was a total failure and all I had was sleeping from one church to another and eventually in a kiosk with half roof. There was a time in my life when I could not afford 20p worth of groundnut and all I could do was to weep over and over again.

To make everything worse, i failed my SSCE exams and no university will take such a failure on. Life became unbearable as i saw all friends left for school. Rejection set in and all i could see around me was a life heading for doom.

For 10 years of my life, non of my family members knew i was alive. The only one who was there for me, my mum was also very ill and had to travel to Togo living me alone in Accra with no one to call brother, sister, uncle, name them. This continued until i met four people, one lady, and 3 gentle men: Sherry, Rev.Micah, Rev. Nii Odartey and Mr Isaac Annan who showed me much love and gave me a reason to live again.

After my first suicide attempt, Rev. Nii Odartey had to take me into his house, gave me the comfort of life and eventually took me to the village where i came from at least to go stay with family members for a while. After some few weeks, i had to run back to Accra because purpose was boiling inside of me and even though i didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with my life, I still came to Accra anyway.

This time around I met Mr Isaac Annan who perfected my desire to be a graphic designer, he gave me a job opportunity and I worked with him for sometime. All this while I was sleeping in a Kiosk until Sherry introduced me to Rev. Micah of Reigning Family Church. He took me in, gave me his bed, his room and everything I could possibly desire in life at that point of my life. He gave me the opportunity to teach in his father's school and this went on for some number of years until I started working on my own as a graphic designer.

At this point, I could afford some few things and my most cherished property was a ghana must go bag with some few cloths. Fast forward, I was introduced by a wonderful gentleman called Mr. Myles Hagan president of Labone Chapter of the Full Gospel Business Men Fellowship International . I became a member and i joined the media department.

This was where the transformation begun, at their meetings, i heard stories of men and women who were torn apart in life and yet when they came into contact with Christ with the right environment of love and care, their lives transformed from nothing to something. I was moved by these stories and had the desire that I will also tell me story someday because all the things I had gone through was for a reason. I kept serving as a media person in Full Gospel Businessmen Fellowship until I met Dr. Charlse Buckman who introduced me to the Stanbic Business Incubator where I meet lot of young people with wonderful ideas and innovations which was contributing to the development of the African continent. So I got inspired and I started an NGO called World Initiatives Forum International(WIFI) and the sole aim is to make sure that young people will have an enabling environment to share their fears, worries, ideas and innovations so together we can build.

Today the story is different all because I got inspired by the stories of people who never gave up against all odds in life and people who never gave up on me despite my all my failures. I made a choice that i was going to stop failing, rise from that life of despair into a purpose driven life. That’s exactly what the WIFI community does. If someone did it for me, then WIFI

will do it for you. #worldintiativesforum #wifiintiatives