As a dreadful year approaches its end, we want to celebrate some miracles. 

When your mother or grandmother or guardian tells you that after hanging on and keeping you in school for years, they simply can't do it any longer and that you have to drop out, or when they explain to you that you won't be able to start school with your friends, or that despite your great test results, you definitely can't go to college, at that moment your hopes for the future die.  But when a teacher, or a friend, or your guardian hears about a person in your community or in a nearby village who buys uniforms or even pays tuition for students who need help, that has to be called a miracle. And it changes your life.

So today, we want to celebrate with you the lives changed and the young Gambians given hope, through the partnership of generous donors and hard-working Gambian Community Coordinators and volunteers, each doing what they can to give these young people a chance.  We call this partnership GambiaRising.  None of us could do it alone, and each is essential.  

If you have supported these young people this year, let me speak for them and thank you.  (And if you have not yet joined us, you can quickly remedy that here.)

Our Gambian team's relentless commitment to using every donated dollar to do the most good possible has enabled us to support the aspirations of more students than ever this year.  Despite the terrible economic times in the U.S., those who pitched in extra this year are so far more than making up for those who can't do so until their situation improves. 

Lately I've been thinking about how vaccines work.  They don't in themselves defend against disease.  Instead they give your body the opportunity to create its own defense against that disease. 

It seems to me that an education is in a way analogous: it does not in itself create a better life.  But by not marrying, by not entering the unskilled labor market while still legally a child, by going to class with your peers until you graduate, you have the opportunity to gain the knowledge and develop the skills you will need to create that better life for yourself.

In the new year we will continue to tell in more detail the stories of some of these students in our weekly FaceBook posts and monthly email updates.  But today, let's celebrate the more than two thousand lives completely changed this year through these donations, this hard work. And if you have not yet joined us this year, we need you more than ever, so please do so here: www.gambiarising.org/donate. 

Each of the photos below were taken in the past few weeks, mostly on camera phones by our Coordinators.  Each of these young people is in school this year because of GambiaRising's support. 

For those of you whose contributions this year have enabled us to do this work and enabled these young people to have possibility in their life, thank you for standing with them and for giving them this chance.  

We wish you the happiest of holidays.

Mike McConnell
Managing Trustee
GambiaRising
www.gambiarising.org
www.facebook.com/gambiarising

1500 Park Ave. Apt PH503
Emeryville, CA  94608-3578