The quiet man whose kindness became a foundation

He answered to Nana Kwame. He was thirty when he passed on the morning of 26 April 2021, and the people who sat with him in those last hours remember a small, complete prayer.

Thank you Lord, I have done it.

Words like that do not arrive by accident. They are earned. Dacaregh carries his name because the work he started quietly in his lifetime is the work we now do publicly in his honour.

A son of Accra

Derrick Kwame Ameyaw Antwi was born on 5 May 1990 in Accra, the first son and third of four children of Kwadwo Antwi and Rita Amoafoa Agyeman. He went through Prince of Peace Preparatory in North Kaneshie, then Star Avenue Primary and Junior High in Kokomlemle. His BECE results were strong enough to take him straight to New Juabeng Secondary School in Koforidua, and from there to the University of Cape Coast.

He reported to Bayport Financial Services in 2014 for national service. The dedication he brought to those first months turned the temporary post into a career. By the time he passed he was Logistics Manager at Bayport and was reading for a Master's in Total Quality Management at the University of Professional Studies, Accra, fitting the coursework around long days at the office.

A heart that lifted others

To know Derrick was to watch grace move through a person. He was bright, polite to a fault, and somehow gentle through it all. Cousins came to him for advice. Friends came to him for clarity. He believed deeply in education and in its power to take a child from one chapter of life and write a completely different one.

His kindness did not stop at family. Quietly, without making a show of it, he clothed people who needed clothes. He fed people who were hungry. He sat with people the world had stopped noticing. He used to say that a person's actions are a deep reflection of their character, and he made sure his own daily life said something true.

A life of faith and service

He grew up in a home that prayed. His earliest Sundays were spent at Adabraka Official Town Presby alongside his mother. Later he worshipped at Good Shepherd Methodist Church in Bubuashie, before finally settling at Bethel Methodist Church, Kokomlemle, the place that became his spiritual home.

Within the Youth Fellowship he served as Circuit Treasurer from 2015 to 2018 and Society Chaplain from 2016 to 2019. His leadership was calm, his prayers were steady, and his heart kept pulling him toward the prison and hospital ministries, the corners of service most people prefer not to look at. In 2010 he joined the Lay Preachers Programme, hungry to deepen his own walk with God and to share what he was learning. Just weeks before he passed, the church recognised everything he had poured in by awarding him the Superintendent Minister's Award for Committed and Hard Working Members. The honour reached him posthumously. The work was already done.

The work we now carry

Dacaregh exists to keep that work alive. Our two pillars are simple because his were. Health and Healing covers hospital bills and ward visits for children whose families cannot afford the cost of care. Basic Needs and Welfare delivers food, clothing and essentials to vulnerable children in orphanages and street communities.

So far, two outreaches sit on the public record. In May 2023 we spent a quiet morning at the Rafiki Satellite Village orphanage in the Effutu Municipality of the Central Region, about twenty kilometres east of Winneba, and left rice, toiletries, water and a small cash gift toward the running of the home. In December 2025 we visited the National Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra and gave GHS 5,000 toward dressings, pain relief and the small daily costs families on the burns ward carry.

It is a short list. We are aware of that. Every visit, every gift, every meal that follows it is meant to make the list a little longer in his name.

Rest well, Nana Kwame. Your race was run with grace. Your light remains.