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Alieu Gaye was over budget and behind schedule. So when Bala Musa Baldeh called, Alieu knew he had to say "Sorry." Alieu is GambiaRising's Coordinator for the Lower River Region (LRR), and also the head teacher at Brikamanding Lower Basic School. Musa Baldeh was head teacher at Sinchu Njegudi and told Alieu he had 5 girls in the village who had dropped out after completing 6th grade. And another 15 girls who had dropped out of school before completing 6th grade. He heard that Alieu could help children like these. Was that true?
Sinchu Njegudi village is in the Jarra West district of LRR, a few kilometers east of Bureng. The school is small: only 56 children in seven grades (Nursery through 6). We were told that the women of the village pressured the government to build it, since Bureng was farther than the 3 km guideline for the maximum distance that young children should walk to school. But not everyone in the village saw the point.
Sinchu Njegudi finally got its school, but enrollment was low. Some farming families are suspicious of "western" education. How does the curriculum apply to a girl who is going to be a farmer's wife when she grows up, cooking, cleaning, farming, and raising babies? Other families found the small costs of uniforms and books to be out of reach, especially as the school year starts during "hungry season" before the Fall harvest. If we helped these 15 younger girls re-enroll, the school's enrollment would increase 26%. And more than half of them would be in grades 3 through 6, where the class sizes were far too small. We asked Alieu to be patient; although we didn't have funds at the moment, we would keep asking everyone we could to join so we could help new students. Over the next few months, enough new donors did start monthly donations that we called Alieu with good news: we could provide uniforms and books for all 15 girls to go back to school, and for the 5 who had stopped after 6th grade to go on to upper basic school and 7th grade.
Alieu got on his motorbike and headed to the village. He found the girls waiting for him.
Leading the greeting party was the Sinchu Ngudi Mother's Club. Every Gambian school has a Mother's Club; some are more involved than others. This one is very involved. We have found that some of the fiercest supporters of girls' education in The Gambia are mothers who know personally how the possibilities they had in life were curtailed by their lack of education. Even when their husbands don't agree, they search for a way to get their daughters that chance. And in more and more cases, GambiaRising is that chance.
Alieyu knew that the women of the village had been the cause of the school being built in the first, place, so he was delighted to meet them.
They told him there were certainly more than 20 girls in the village who would go to school if only they could get uniforms and books. In fact, maybe twice as many. "Give these girls the chance we never had," they urged.
Alieu said he would see what could be done. He could promise support for 20 now, but he would see if more was possible.
When Alieu got home he sent photos of the 20 students. Then he asked: could we do more?
We asked Alieu to get details. He reported that there were 40 students who wished to enroll or re-enroll in the school. (10 more girls and also 10 boys). What could we do? We are not good at saying no, but we also can't start supporting someone we don't believe we'll be able to support year after year. But we do tend to err on the side of doing too much in situations like this, and as fundraising continued to go well, we agreed to supply books and uniforms to all 40 students on the condition that they would be careful with the uniforms and try to make most of them last through the next school year as well (we would still supply more books in the fall). (In other words, we borrowed from the next year's budget to buy those uniforms.)
And overnight, the school's enrollment increased more than 70%. In Nursery and 1st grade, it grew 150%. This made for some happy faces. Here are some of them:
Every dollar we raise is precious, and we try to do the most good we can with it. When you donate, none of that donation is used for overhead, payroll, or even offices. It is used only to support the education of young Gambians, mostly girls. There are so many villages like Sinchu Njegudi; in virtually every Gambian village at least 20% of the young people are not in school. Often more. The difference that a small monthly donation can make in a young Gambian's life is enormous. The difference that a larger donation can make in the lives of a village, or of a brillant 12th grader hoping to go to college is equally dramatic.
If you are helping make this happen, we are deeply grateful to you. If you haven't donated in the past year, please join or re-join us today. There is nowhere else that these young people can turn.
Mike McConnell
Managing Trustee
GambiaRising
www.gambiarising.org/donate
1500 Park Ave Apt PH503
Emeryville, CA 94608-3578
