Sponsorship

We are currently looking for four sponsors,
Two boys need sponsoring through school, one of them is pictured here, Omar.
To sponsor one of these boys would be £10 a month, this will pay for uniforms, school bags, school shoes, school books, school fees and anything else they need to help them progress through their education.

We need to have an extra teacher to start in September at the Sikunda Village School, so would very much like to have a sponsor her - we intend to have a lady teacher to join Saine and Modou. To sponsor her salary would be £15 a month

And lastly, if possible we would like to find a sponsor for a mature student who very much wants to do the next level of computer studies starting in June, for six months, the cost will be £140.00 as a one-off fee.

In fact any amount no matter how small, from as little as £1 a month does really make a difference, and all the donations go to what they should go to, and none taken for administration costs.

Gift Aid if you are a taxpayer also boosts the donation by another 22%
If you are interested, please contact me, Sue, either by telephone, 01296 688039, or email sjones@friendsofsikunda.org

Please see the next blog below for the latest pictures and news from our trip this month.

April 2013 trip to Gambia

We will update the projects page soon, but meanwhile here are a few pictures from last week: 

The Women's Garden Project, this is looking really good, lots of vegetables being grown, the women were really pleased with the produce so far this year and say its the best year yet!

The Skills Centre has a lot of young girls starting to sew and crochet. Syah is doing a great job managing them all

Suwado with some of the children from her compound in Si-Kunda

Dan taking Ansu's nursery class in Toniataba School!

Unloading our luggage after our journey back to the coast

With Abdoulie, Paseedy and Fatou

Trip to Si-Kunda, April 2013

I 

I shall be going to Gambia again in April, on the 12th. This time my son Dan is coming with me, so we will be updating this website with news and photographs of our projects when we get back.

February 2013 Trip to Gambia

Gloz, Marje and I have just returned from a trip to The Gambia. We had a wonderful time, and achieved quite a lot in the time we had. The compound in Busumbala is well on the way to be habitable, the ceilings done, floors tiled, doors and windows in, hopefully it wont be long now till Sankung and his family are able to move in. We met quite a few of our older students who are in further education, and all seem happy and well. We intend to send out updates of our all our students to their sponsors in the next few weeks. We are providing further excercise books to Toniataba and Fonkoi Kunda schools to see them through to the end of the school year. While we were in Si-Kunda we had the well pump repaired, it had become very difficult to draw up water, so need some replacement parts. The workshop is being managed by Syah, and they need some sewing needles, both hand and Singer machine, also some very thin (ideally cotton) materials to practice their 'cutting out' skills with and basic sewing for those wishing to learn. If anyone can help we would be very grateful! There are currently 88 children registered at the Sikunda Nursery School, they would like some new toys, but nothing to bulky that would be difficult and expensive to send by shipment. We always need pencils and colouring pencils, rulers, erasors, biros and excercise books for the schools we support if anyone has any spare? We managed to get to the Independence Day celebrations in Banjul stadium. The first time any of us has been and we were very glad we went, it was the 48th year celebration of Independence. It was quite an event with the military, schools and cultural groups all represented. The Gambian president was present, also a few other African leaders. I do realise that the website really does need updating, and that is on the list of things to do, so watch this space. Many thanks to all our supporters, and the Bonus Ball continues to roll on which really does help with our revenue. Sue

Newsletter no.19

Our latest Newsletter (no.19) has now been distributed, so all our sponsors should receive one any time now. If there is anyone reading this that would like a copy, please let me know, either by phone 07717 821 604, or email sjones@friendsofsikunda.org

September 24th

Sankung is busy at the moment (and has been for the last few weeks!) organising all the payments and placements of all our students at their schools and colleges for the 2012/13 school year.

Pakalinding Upper Basic School now has the windows in the computer room repaired where needed, and excercise books were ordered for the schools we support.

We distributed our last newsletter to our sponsors in July, so if anyone reading this would like a copy then please contact me on sjones@friendsofsikunda.org or telephone on 01296 688039.

Sue

Sankung and Oumie's Garden Party!
What a wonderful day we had, the rain kept off, Sankung and Oumie from The Gambia were our guests of honour, and Sankung kept busy making Ataya tea for everyone. So many of you came who have supported our charity for all these years, and it was great for Sankung and Oumie to meet you all. Oumie had helped me make the chicken yassa Gambian style the day before so along with that and the great barbeque cooked up by Mark, with Les toiling away in the kitchen making sure everything was ready in time for our meal at 4pm, it all went well. At the same time we have raised a lot of funds as well, the grand total will be announced on the website in a few days. We will have photographs and a write up in the July newsletter.

We had so much help without which we couldn't have done it, all the trustees and committee members and families, and to name just a few Les and Kate, Richard and Myra, and Daisy my eight yr old granddaughter was a little star running the Treasure Hunt stall and collecting money for us, and I know Aiden Fran's grandson was helping too, thankyou so much to everyone!