We never know where the appeals are going to come from.
In 2012, Sister Amala Doss wrote to tell us that a woman had walked in to the Catholic Education Secretariat to appeal for help. The woman was from the Congo and had married a Gambian who was working there. He had then moved the family back to The Gambia, but had now divorced her and started a new family. She was left her to fend for herself and for her three children. A long way from home, she didn't have the money to return to the Congo and besides, her daughter had already started school in The Gambia, where the schools were taught in English, not French. The woman had started taking in laundry to feed her family but had not been able to keep her school-aged daughter in school.
Could we help?
Luckily, our Fall campaign had been strong in 2012, and we were able to say "Yes". And so only one month after the start of the school year, her daughter Bintou was able to go back to school.
The key to GambiaRising's program is to keep our promises, year after year. (That also what makes our finances challenging.) But this year, six years later, Bintou is starting 9th grade, thanks to our donors' support. Watch her "Thank You" below.
Halfway between Westfield and the airport, in Lamin Daranka, our Community Coordinators Mariama Jallow Minteh and Ebrima Minteh squeezed their budgets this year so they could add 11 new students, bringing the students supported from their community up to 51. At the start of school, they invited the students and their parents (mostly single mothers) to their home to receive their uniforms and supplies. Most of these children first started school when offered support through Mariama and Ebrima, and none of them would be in school today without this support. After a pep talk on the value of education, the kids got their school uniforms and supplies; here are photos of 1/3 of them.
Thanks to the tireless work of our Gambian Community Coordinators, we may not be the most efficient non-profit in the world, but we are certainly among them.
Sitting by the side of the road in Sibanor for 7 hours last month while a mechanic changed the bearings in the front wheel of our borrowed vehicle, I won't pretend that I didn't have moments of doubt as I watched the air-conditioned vehicles of other non-profits and agencies driving up the South Bank Road. But later on the trip, whenever I was presented with a list of students who had dropped out of school and who we could send back for just $40 to $100 each, I knew we had made the right choice: focus our funds on the kids, not the organization.
We were actually able to get quite a bit of work done sitting under that tree in Sibanor, and which, exactly, of the waiting-list children would we have had to turn away for the sake of a more comfortable journey? And what about paid staff? To hire all of our Coordinators and pay them a fair wage would use 33% of our annual budget. Is it any wonder that they themselves insist that having them volunteer so we can use the funds to help more children is the right way to go.
Most importantly, once we start to support a student, we continue to back them until they complete 12th grade. That is only possible if our supporters come through year after year as well. And we are so grateful to you for doing so.
We know our work is far from done. But thanks to your support, we have renewed wind in our sails. And these kids have a chance. They needed you, and you came through for them.
Thank you for being part of GambiaRising.
Mike McConnell
Managing Trustee, GambiaRising
www.gambiarising.org
www.facebook.com/gambiarising
1500 Park Ave., Apt PH503
Emeryville, CA 94608-3578