A charity founded by a woman from Muswell Hill has won an award for its work to promote early childhood education in Ghana.

Lively Minds, which is based in Archway, won the British High Commission Charity of the Year Award at this year’s Ghana UK Based Achievement (GUBA) Awards.

Alison Naftalin, the charity’s founder, was presented with the prize at a ceremony in central London on November 16.

The award was sponsored and presented by the British High Commissioner to Ghana Peter Jones.

He recognised the contribution Lively Minds has made to early childhood education in rural Northern Ghana, where the charity currently runs play centres in 38 deprived villages and reading schemes in eight primary schools.

Ms Naftalin, of Wood Vale, said: “We are so delighted to receive this award and have our work recognised by GUBA.

“We were nominated alongside three other great charities, so we were very excited when it was announced at the ceremony that we’d won”

The charity was set up in Ghana five years ago with aim of teaching and empowering mothers in one village how to make educational games and to run their own play centre.

Lively Minds has since trained more than 1,100 mothers in 38 villages and have reached more than 8,600 children in Ghana alone.

Ms Naftalin added: “Play activities are essential to a child’s future development but many children living in poverty in rural Ghana do not have the opportunities to play that are readily available for children in the UK.

“It's this basic learning and development opportunity that can help children to build the crucial skills they need if they are to lift themselves out of poverty.

This year marks our fifth birthday too – so winning this GUBA award is a fantastic end to our anniversary year.”

Over the next three years, the charity plans to set up 39 play centres and reading schemes in Northern Ghana benefitting 15,000 children and 1,100 mothers, partly using funding from Comic Relief.

It will also support existing communities by providing regular parenting workshops.

For more information about Lively Minds and how to get involved, visit www.livelyminds.org