It is summer, and the annual rains are falling across The Gambia; the countryside is lush and beautiful. But in five short weeks, schools will begin opening, and across the country, too many young people are wondering if they will be able to go.  

They call this "hungry season" in rural villages, because last year's crops are eaten, and the new harvest will not be for several months. If you have savings, you buy food. If not, you struggle. It is definitely not the time to ask a family wondering how to feed themselves to find the funds to buy school uniforms, school books, and get ready for the new school year. How will that put food on the table?

And if your daughter has reached "marrying age" (i.e., puberty), it can seem to make less sense than ever to keep feeding her and sending her to school, when you can get a "bride price" and find a new family for her to belong to. 

This is where you come in. For many hundreds of young Gambians, the support of GambiaRising donors has meant they could stay in (or go back to) school without regard to the financial fortunes of their family.  Most come from families where a widowed or divorced mother (or even grandmother) are the head of the family. Often the mothers who come to us did not get an education themselves and are determined that their daughters (and sons) will get that chance. They know all too well how lack of education gave them few options in life.

Sainabou’s father abandoned his family and moved to Senegal; all the children left school and her mother now sells fruit on the street to make ends meet.

In January, 2017 we gave Sainabou and her sisters the support they needed to go back to school.

Sainabou will turn 19 next week. If we keep supporting her, she will be in 9th grade.

When we adopted our Community Coordinator model, we knew that our Gambian coordinators would be able to focus not on those for whom paying the costs of school is difficult; but on those for whom it is impossible. 

We have helped several dozen students who had dropped out return to Kunkujang Keitaya Upper Basic school over the years, so we were not surprised when a teacher from the school showed up at our Coordinator's home with Fatou J.  She had dropped out after 6th grade, when her father kicked her mother and her out of his compound (he had three wives, so why keep the uppity one?) We didn't have the funds to get her back into school at the time, but this year, if all our donors renew their support, then we can use new donations (or increased donations) to get Fatou and others like her back into school.

Where she belongs.

We understand that the world is broken, and that there are many others asking for your help. That's why we are so careful with the precious funds we raise. We also know that the needs of Gambian young people are not going to rise to the top of most people's list, and we can only count on those who have some relationship to this country and its wonderful people, if only through us.

I promise that whatever you can contribute will change lives, right way, and bring hope. Please do what you can to help them.

It takes so little to change a life

Thank you.

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

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