WHAT WE DO

Bantangba Nursery School 

Serving a community of over 10,000 residents in Somita, we started building the nursery school in 2013 after Sandy's father in law gifted the land. As soon as the permissions and blessings had been given by the village elders and village leader, we started to dig in November 2013. Despite very little financial backing, we gradually created the school with the help of local supporters. In September 2014, we welcomed 114 children, employed 2 members of teaching staff and 3 student teachers on a three year placement from Gambia College.  

Realising there are more children who need to attend the nursery than there are places, we have embarked on an ambitious project to create more opportunities by building a second nursery block consisting of 2 additional classrooms, a Dream Room, Headteacher's office and employing more staff to ensure the most deprived children have the opportunity to attend school via sponsorship. 

There are currently 178 students registered. We now employ a Headteacher, Deputy Head, 5 qualified teachers, 1 student teacher and an Islamic Teacher.

If you'd like to donate to this project, you can do so via our secure PayPal Giving Fund or contact us for more information. 

Sanyang Clinic

In 2020 we started to support Sanyang Major Health Clinic. The Clinic serves a population of 52,000 people and in 2019 safely delivered 639 babies. With your support and in addition to providing cleaning materials, medicine and maternity items, we rewired the laboratory block and also paid to get the Ambulance repaired and serviced. We were also able to renovate the toilet and shower area for the Maternity unit thanks to a generous donation from Supporters who visited. 

In the meantime and as ever, we are always looking for donations of first aid and medical equipment - our wish list can be found here or if you'd prefer to make a financial donation enabling us to purchase what we need, then you can do so via our secure PayPal Giving Fund 
 

Kitty Arabic School

The school at Kitty, close to Brikama, caters for over 700 students from nursery to grade 9. They teach in both English & Arabic and are examined by the Islamic Amana Council. They cover core subjects of Maths, English, Science, Social & Environmental Studies, Arabic, Koranic (9 different subjects) and Physical Education. School fees paid by parents pays for the teachers salaries, however this is an unreliable source of income so the 15 teachers often work without a regular and consistent income.

Through sponsorship we provide a small amount for each teacher so they can rely on at least a small salary each month. We have also sponsored several teachers through teacher training. The Headteacher is sponsored and completed his Higher Teaching Diploma in 2018.

The school originally consisted of 6 classrooms and a nursery. With our support, they now boast 10 classrooms, nursery block and store. We have renovated the existing classrooms, including roofing. We have constructed 2 blocks of toilets, a library, staff room and also provided a water pump for water. We also shipped over donated school furniture to furnish the classrooms including tables chairs, filing cabinets and storage.

A new nursery block was opened in November 2018 and boasts three furnished classrooms, a toilet block, dream room, a small office and a playground with equipment. We were delighted to host a celebration of the opening of the nursery block alongside the primary sponsors who visited from the UK. 

The school gardens have also been developed in to allotment style plots for students to grow and sell produce with a small percentage of the money going to the student and the rest is reinvested in to the school. 
We are committed to supporting the teaching staff and also providing Kitty School with pencils, exercise books, chalk, paper, colouring pencils, marker pens, worksheets, visual aids, footballs, skipping ropes and tennis balls. 

If you'd like to donate to this project, you can donate via our PayPal Giving Fund or contact us for more information. 

Sanyang Scouts

 The charity began links with the Sanyang Scouts in 2007 when we were treated to a wonderful day of entertainment. Sanyang is an extremely economically deprived village, so the Scouts are a very important part of the community. They do a lot of work around the village, cleaning and undertaking odd jobs.

With the help of supporters in the UK, we have provided many items to Sanyang Scouts. We have given musical instruments, helped them buy  uniforms, first aid kits and other essential equipment for the children to experience the spectrum of being a member of a uniformed youth group.

The Scout troop continues to flourish and numbers continue to increase each year. The Scouts have two training camps per year which the charity has been able to support via specific donations which have been made. Many of our older scouts go on to secure employment in uniformed services, and they often come back when they can to support the troop and offer their help with training.

Please get in touch if you would like further information or to visit the scouts while holidaying in The Gambia, as you will be made very welcome.

  • Sanyang Scouts

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Sanyang Arabic School

This is our latest which came about after a group of supporters expressed an interest in donating to either a toilet or water project. A toilet block was built along with water supply, including taps. 


This school was founded in 2010 and local huts with grass roots were initially built, and as they grew they built a mud block classroom block which was eventually finished last year, although had no doors or windows. The school managed to salvage some doors and windows, as well as some very old blackboards. The school have constructed a corrugated building to house more students and have also started to make blocks with cement to build another classroom block, which should be more fit for purpose.


We have been working with the school for almost 3 years now They are an absolute pleasure to work with and always work hard when we are on our building projects inviting teahcers, ex students and the community to help where they can.

 

We have refurbished the existing classroom block and Head teachers office , fitting doors and windows, plastering internal and external walls, flooring throughout and painting. 

We then set about building the classroom block the community had started to make bricks for. 6 classrooms and a staff room. Our next project there was to build a proper kitchen so the ladies that cook for the children were able to do so in clean and healthy conditions.


Finally in the summer of 2023 the locally built corrugate and grass classrooms were destroyed in a big storm so we decided to build a purpose built nursery block, 2 large classrooms ad office. This was completed in March 2024 and the students will go in to their lovely new nursery in April 2024.

Several teachers have been supported to complete teacher training.

We have been very lucky to have some fantastic supporters , Rotary clubs and individuals who have donated or raised funds to ensure we could do all the work

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