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We know that the universe of people who care about the fates of Gambian children is limited. Nearly all our donors have lived in The Gambia or know someone who has. Most of these are returned Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs). Who would understand better than they what happens to a Gambian girl who doesn't go to school? But for the last two years, due to the pandemic, there have been no new PCVs returning from The Gambia. Yet young Gambians come to our Coordinators every day asking for a chance.
One pleasant surprise was when we started to receive distributions from IRAs and other retirement accounts. Those of us of retirement age know that we are required to take minimum distributions each year, which are both taxable and also raise our income levels, unless they are donated to a nonprofit.
Another important source of new funding has been supporters who raised funds on some occasion among their own network, knowing that the donations were in honor of their relationships, but they still could change lives. FaceBook birthday fundraisers, fundraisers attached to weddings, Giving Tuesday, and corporate campaigns have all been crucial in helping more students.
Then there is the story developing in my own family. When I moved to The Gambia to serve as Peace Corps Country Director, my only granddaughter (Flora) was not quite two years old.
She was four when we moved back to California, and it was a few more years before we first talked about The Gambia at all seriously. I got a photograph the day she first gave some of her allowance to sponsor a Gambian girl one year older than her, and kept her apprised of that student's progress through Brikamaba Basic Cycle and Senior Secondary School.
Two years later, when Flora was 14, she asked if we needed summer volunteers. I explained that our Gambian team coordinated our program, as they were both on the ground and that was where most of the work was done.
But I added that here in America, the way we could help most meaningfully was simply raising money for that work. "Okay," she said.
At this time our Coordinator for the Lower River Region, Alieu Gaye, was teaching at Kuli Kunda Lower Basic Cycle School, which had had a surge of girl enrollment when we started working there. Four miles from Kuli Kunda, at the end of the road leading to the Bintang Bolong, was a village where no one went to school. Could we help them get one? We don't have funds to spare from providing scholarships these days, but I talked with Flora, and she went to work writing letters to everyone she knew. By mid-July, she had 28 donations, averaging $100 apiece. Since the goal was to have the school open in September, we sent funds as they came in, and the villagers, led by Alieu, started making bricks and preparing the site. Photos of cement being loaded on gellies, then transported by donkey cart after dark to the village, doubtless aided the fundraising campaign back in the States.
But building a school is not a low-cost endeavor, and the cost continued to rise. Roofing materials, windows, doors, desks - all these needed to be purchased. It turned out that making bricks had been the easy part. That is when reinforcements arrived. Family friends in New York heard about the campaign. Their sons had spent part of each summer with Flora and her family for years. And one of them, Sebastian, was about to have his bar mitzvah. He offered to include the Brikamanding school as one of his gift requests. And in a matter of weeks, that put the project over the top. Villagers rushed to complete the building. The school opened with two classrooms, for Nursery and 1st grade, depending on the children's age.
The experience energized Flora and Sebastian. The Ministry named Alieu Gaye head teacher of the new school. When the first teachers assigned to the school asked for a transfer, because there was no place for them to live except in students' homes, Alieu appealed for help to build housing for the teachers. Flora and Sebastian rolled up their sleeves again and raised the money not only for housing at Brikamanding but while they were at it, at Kuli Kunda school as well. In Kuli Kunda, so many girls were enrolling that the Ministry was sending more female teachers, but there was no suitable housing for young professional women to live in Kuli Kunda.
Over the two years since these wildly impactful projects, Flora entered high school herself, where she organized a group of her friends to stage a walk-a-thon to raise money to buy sewing machines for St. George's senior secondary school in Basse. And more recently, she organized a fourth campaign to dig a well for the Brikamanding school.
So there was plenty to see when Flora and Sebastian, along with their families, arrived in The Gambia Christmas week. It is one thing to be a tourist, visiting villages as sightseers, but it is very different to visit as a collaborator. I could not have been more proud as Flora, her mother (and my daughter) Ericka, her husband Eric, Sebastian, and his mother Annie surveyed the work they had enabled.
I'll close with some photos of our trip, but before that I want to emphasize that every time we give a child a chance to go back to school, or if they excel in 12th grade, even offer a chance to go to college, other young people begin to wonder if the same might be possible for them. We are literally raising expectations of what might be possible in hundreds of Gambian villages. This brings with it two issues: 1) the need to count on all our donors staying with us year after year, as we are making up to 16-year commitments to our students. And 2) the need to find new sources of donations. Flora and Sebastian have shown one way. My daughter Ericka organized a photography show and auction as part of Flora's sewing machine campaign. Three churches attended by RPCVs have become regular supporters. A returned PCV and her mother organized a year-end campaign in Salida, Colorado in 2021 to build teachers housing for four upcountry schools. Facebook birthday fundraisers can still be succesful. And of course, minimum required distributions from IRAs are a tax-effective a way to give. We are so grateful to everyone who donated in 2022 and plans to in 2023. And we'll continue to work overtime to make your gifts impactful, changing young Gambians' lives.
Mike McConnell
Managing Trustee
GambiaRising
www.gambiarising.org
www.facebook.com/gambiarising
1500 Park Ave Apt PH503
Emeryville, CA 94608-3578
The Brikamanding school is now full, with four grades in double shifts. Could Flora and Sebastian help to raise funds so the school can expand. to add 5th and 6th grades? Before they reached home, they were already writing letters. The first funds arrived a few weeks ago, and the community has started to work, building their children's future.
You can read more about the Brikamanding project here: https://www.gambiarising.org/a-school-for-brikamanding.html