We created GambiaRising 14 years ago to help young Gambians, especially girls, stay in school through 12th grade.  Our decentralized network of volunteer Regional Coordinators and school and village coordinators gives us a unique ability to know who is in need, who is at risk, and who is making the decisions in the family.

The generosity of our 200 donors allowed us to do this beyond our wildest dreams.  This year, more than 5000 students are in Gambian schools with uniforms, books, and school supplies from GambiaRising.  More than 3500 are girls.

Booksellers and cloth sellers are giving us discounts, five tailors are now sewing  uniforms for free, and the success stories are heartwarming.  I wish I could tell them all to you, but we also promised not to "overshare" and fill your mailboxes, so we let a few represent them all.

As you might guess, a young person who does well in school and has been supported in doing so, starts to think about what else might be possible if they could go to college or university.  Could they be a teacher?  A nurse?  Work in an office?  Help the country develop and also help their parents?  And so slowly, as funds permitted, we began funding scholarships to Gambia College and the University of The Gambia (not to for-profit institutions, which aim for profit and charge much higher fees).  Then other students started coming to our school coordinators, asking if they knew anyone who could help them go to college.  I remember one of our College students telling of being on a bus and hearing two girls talking about this organization that sometimes helps those who can't pay, and realizing that they were talking about us !

This year, we finally bit the bullet and set up a publicly accessible portal for students to apply for support to go to college or university.  Josh Shrager, a long-time Board member, burned the midnight oil to create the portal and it went live in September.  (bit.ly/gambiarising-college)

To prevent being overwhelmed, we published our high standards for consideration: boys wanting to go to the university needed to be in the  top 1% of national exam takers; girls needed to be in the top 2%.  For nursing, public health, and secondary school teaching, it was the top 10%.  For elementary school, the top 20%.

These are the best of the best of Gambian students.  We stated clearly that everyone else deserved a chance to go to college but our funds were limited and so we could only consider the very highest achievers.

It is now two months since the portal went live.  Almost immediately the applications  began to flood in.  Currently, more than 500 students who qualify for support have applied.  Some sent a sophisticated statement along with their application:

Others clearly didn't have access to a laptop or a printer:

At this time of year, we are always stretching the budget to the breaking point.  But we set the lofty goal of funding 100 new scholarships for college this year.  We raised our selection standards but even then the numbers blew past our capacity.  We decided to fund university scholarships on a half-now, half-in-January basis, which allowed us to expand further. To date, we have granted 125.  We are still prioritizing scholarships for students in Nursery to grade 12, and we will not turn away any one in those grades if we feel they are in jeopardy of dropping out (or have already dropped out).  But how wonderful it is when we can help some of the country's best and brightest become the next generation of teachers, nurses, and leaders.  

If you're following the math, you'll see where this leaves us.  We've stretched the budget to the breaking point.  We've given support to 25% more new college/university students than we planned on.  We have set the standard to be considered for a scholarship to include only the  country's very top students.  We've asked students to apply for support to several organizations that may have more funds than we do.  These are the ones who came back, and we are their last place to to turn.  We are unable to fund scholarships for 375 students who meet our very high standards.  Is our glass 25% full or 75% empty?  

While we are celebrating 125 of The Gambia's very best students who will now have a chance to truly have an exceptional future, and deeply thank everyone who has donated, is donating, or intends to donate between now and the end of the year, I also want to make an urgent appeal to anyone reading this letter who has not donated this year.  We are not asking you to give until it hurts, but we are surely asking everyone to do their part.  While we are grateful that the glass is 1/4 full, it does not have to be 3/4 empty.  You can help fill it.  $350 will fully fund a teaching student's scholarship for a year.  $450 for a nursing student, and $750 will fund a year at the University.  That is $30 to $62 per month.  If you have never donated, please start.  If you have an IRA, this is a perfect use of your Required Minimum Distribution.  If you donated in the past and stopped, these young people really need you to re-start.  And 100% of everything you donate will go to fund scholarships.  

It was not these young people's fault that they were born into one of the world's poorest countries; nor do their lives need to be lives of discouragement.  We can bring them not only hope but the reality of a chance for a better life.  

Mike McConnell
Managing Trustee
GambiaRising
www.gambiarising.org/donate

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Emeryville, CA  94608-3578