Father Jean's Visit, and a Report to the Board
3 September 2012
I hope Father Jean wasn’t looking forward to a restful vacation on his first trip to the United States. Because when I sent an email asking if any of our supporters wanted to meet him while h
e was here, enough said yes that we ate nearly every meal in a different location, and did a lot of driving in between. But my friends live in beautiful places, so we did see some sights en route.
Luckily, Father Jean got some rest by spending his first four nights with the Gambian High Commissioner to the United Nations, at her home in the suburbs of New York City. This was his first experience with jet lag and it surprised him.
I met them on Day Four at her offices a few blocks from the U.N. During our conversation, I had to smile as Father Jean addressed the woman I thought of as Madame High Commissioner as “Mama Suzanne,” his old parishioner from Bakau.
When I found out Father Jean had not yet spent much time in Manhattan, I asked what he wanted to do with the half-day we had left in New York. “See the United Nations,” he replied. So we took the tour. I remembered taking much the same tour when I was nine years old, and the sense of hope for a better world that seemed so fresh back then. I was glad that Father Jean still had it, and truth be told, the tour still moved me.
And how could I not be moved as Father Jean photographed Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."
Lofty goals, but as so much else in the Declaration, still tragically far from being a reality.
After a relaxing two days with friends in the Berkshires, and two more at a friend’s home overlooking the Charles River in South Natick (and with a detour in between to visit our former Gambian coordinator, Yaya Sonko, who is about to start college just outside of Providence), we headed for California.
Thanks to a generous supporter, Father Jean had a place to stay in our loft building in Emeryville, where he could log on to our wi-fi and where we held our first face-to-face GambiaRising Board meeting.
Driving around the Bay area to meet some of our donors, we had plenty of time to talk. He is a committed, remarkable man, and the depth of his commitment to helping others was revealed anew every time we met with someone.
And some of the questions in our meetings also brought new and fascinating information to light. Such as how Father Jean came to become a Catholic (his family is Muslim): “I told the French priest in our town that I wanted to be like him.”
Or the fact that after his junior year in high school, his father insisted he stop wrestling (wrestling rivals football/soccer in west Africa as a spectator sport); at the time he was undefeated and becoming a minor celebrity in southern Senegal.
Or perhaps more interestingly, that when I met him in 2008, he had been acting as Assistant Principal at St. Therese’s in Fula Bantang, in addition to his duties as parish priest. And whenever a family could not pay a students’ fees, he had investigated to determine the reason. If he determined that they truly were struggling even to eat, he had been telling the school “Put that child on my account,” which allowed them to stay in school. So when Father Jean and I had first met to talk about one student that a friend and mentor of mine had agreed to sponsor, and when he had gently urged me to think about the” other children” in the school as well, what was unknown to me at the time was that he had more than a dozen children whose fees he had no way of paying, but who were “on his account.” And thus GambiaRising was born.
For our Board meeting, I prepared a report on GambiaRising's scholarship program. At the end of the 2011-2 school year, we were supporting 114 students.
Of those, 43 were in grades K- 9,
55 were in senior secondary school,
11 at post high-school vocational schools, and
5 were in college or college prep.
We had started the year with 84 students; one had dropped out when she got pregnant (she hopes to return after a year or two), and 31 new students were added during the school year (THANKS to those donors who came aboard during the year and made that possible.)
Five of the girls in the 3-year secretarial/office training program at Presentation School in Banjul graduated in June. I have uploaded their graduation photos here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/32992564@N03/
Two students in the three-year ACCA (accounting) program received their certificates (ACCA is the British equivalent of a Certified Public Accountant); one already has a job. Six more students graduated from Senior Secondary School and we are waiting for exam results to see how many are candidates for further study.
On the other hand, we already have appeals to support 17 new students, and that is before the School Management Committee at St. Therese’s makes their requests for new support. And of course if some of our graduates from 12th grade qualify for college, the cost of their education will quadruple.
Working with the Catholic Education Secretariat has been a real blessing; they are completely dedicated to educating children of all tribes and religions. Under their agreement with the Gambian government, they are administering 14 schools around the country; the curriculum is the same as the other public schools (including Islamic Studies and Christian Religious Studies). The teachers are assigned from the same teacher pool as other schools, but the administration is far better. (Under a similar agreement, I am told that the Methodists are administering Armitage Senior Secondary School, where most of our high school students attend.)
This means that by working with the Secretariat, we have the means to relatively easily support students at other schools under their jurisdiction. But it also means that Secretariat staff members are bringing to our attention especially compelling cases from around the country, and appealing for our support. While our primary focus will continue to be the students at St. Therese’s, if we have the capacity, we certainly would like to support equally needy cases elsewhere in the country.
GambiaRising started the 2010-11 school year supporting 60 students, and by the end of the school year we were supporting 85. We began the following year at 84, and ended in June with 114. We decided that our goal this year will be to support a minimum of 150 students which, after subtracting our recent graduates, is a net of 43 new students. Almost certainly we will have more than 43 worthy new appeals, which tend to build as the year goes on and families run out of money.
To keep pace, we will have to expand our donor/sponsor base.
GambiaRising began as an informal group of my personal friends who sent donations for students in need while I was Country Director for Peace Corps The Gambia. By the time I left at the end of 2009, my friends and I were supporting 23 students. When we formally organized GambiaRising in 2010, it was still largely an ever-expanding circle of my friends (and relatives). But as generous as my friends are, that can only take us so far. Some of the most encouraging moments during Father Jean’s visit were lunches and dinners in which he met friends of friends, several of whom are now supporting students. And our last dinner, high on a hill overlooking Marin County, was at the home of a friend of an old friend, who had just started sponsoring two girls and whom I had not yet met. And she in turn had invited two of her friends to meet with us. This is the kind of spreading the word that will allow our circle to expand at a pace that keeps up with the appeals that are due to start coming in.
In another encouraging development, seven returned Peace Corps volunteers from The Gambia are now supporting students, and more than thirty pitched in at Christmas time to help the goddaughterof a Gambian staff member who was about to be sent home from the U.S. when she fell short of the funds while at junior college in Minnesota. Two new returned volunteers have joined our Board of Trustees as well.
And so, instead of bracing myself for the disappointment and sense of sadness that I was steeling myself for as we enter the new school year, I find myself hopeful. Hopeful that, with the help of not only friends, but their friends, we will be able to reach enough new supporters to be able to take care of the most worthy of the appeals that I know are about to come. In the next two weeks, I will send out our fall appeal. If you are already sponsoring one or more students, thanks in advance; what you can do in addition is simply forward that email to some of your friends. Let them know why you are supporting the program, and these kids. Our new monthly donation program makes it so painless to give: as little as $12.50 per month for a child in grades K-6.
It takes so little to change a life.
Thanks to everyone for helping to get us this far, and for helping to expand the circle so we can support more deserving kids this coming year.
I hope Father Jean wasn’t looking forward to a restful vacation on his first trip to the United States. Because when I sent an email asking if any of our supporters wanted to meet him while h
e was here, enough said yes that we ate nearly every meal in a different location, and did a lot of driving in between. But my friends live in beautiful places, so we did see some sights en route.
Luckily, Father Jean got some rest by spending his first four nights with the Gambian High Commissioner to the United Nations, at her home in the suburbs of New York City. This was his first experience with jet lag and it surprised him.
I met them on Day Four at her offices a few blocks from the U.N. During our conversation, I had to smile as Father Jean addressed the woman I thought of as Madame High Commissioner as “Mama Suzanne,” his old parishioner from Bakau.
When I found out Father Jean had not yet spent much time in Manhattan, I asked what he wanted to do with the half-day we had left in New York. “See the United Nations,” he replied. So we took the tour. I remembered taking much the same tour when I was nine years old, and the sense of hope for a better world that seemed so fresh back then. I was glad that Father Jean still had it, and truth be told, the tour still moved me.
And how could I not be moved as Father Jean photographed Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."
Lofty goals, but as so much else in the Declaration, still tragically far from being a reality.
After a relaxing two days with friends in the Berkshires, and two more at a friend’s home overlooking the Charles River in South Natick (and with a detour in between to visit our former Gambian coordinator, Yaya Sonko, who is about to start college just outside of Providence), we headed for California.
Thanks to a generous supporter, Father Jean had a place to stay in our loft building in Emeryville, where he could log on to our wi-fi and where we held our first face-to-face GambiaRising Board meeting.
Driving around the Bay area to meet some of our donors, we had plenty of time to talk. He is a committed, remarkable man, and the depth of his commitment to helping others was revealed anew every time we met with someone.
And some of the questions in our meetings also brought new and fascinating information to light. Such as how Father Jean came to become a Catholic (his family is Muslim): “I told the French priest in our town that I wanted to be like him.”
Or the fact that after his junior year in high school, his father insisted he stop wrestling (wrestling rivals football/soccer in west Africa as a spectator sport); at the time he was undefeated and becoming a minor celebrity in southern Senegal.
Or perhaps more interestingly, that when I met him in 2008, he had been acting as Assistant Principal at St. Therese’s in Fula Bantang, in addition to his duties as parish priest. And whenever a family could not pay a students’ fees, he had investigated to determine the reason. If he determined that they truly were struggling even to eat, he had been telling the school “Put that child on my account,” which allowed them to stay in school. So when Father Jean and I had first met to talk about one student that a friend and mentor of mine had agreed to sponsor, and when he had gently urged me to think about the” other children” in the school as well, what was unknown to me at the time was that he had more than a dozen children whose fees he had no way of paying, but who were “on his account.” And thus GambiaRising was born.
For our Board meeting, I prepared a report on GambiaRising's scholarship program. At the end of the 2011-2 school year, we were supporting 114 students.
Of those, 43 were in grades K- 9,
55 were in senior secondary school,
11 at post high-school vocational schools, and
5 were in college or college prep.
We had started the year with 84 students; one had dropped out when she got pregnant (she hopes to return after a year or two), and 31 new students were added during the school year (THANKS to those donors who came aboard during the year and made that possible.)
Five of the girls in the 3-year secretarial/office training program at Presentation School in Banjul graduated in June. I have uploaded their graduation photos here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/32992564@N03/
Two students in the three-year ACCA (accounting) program received their certificates (ACCA is the British equivalent of a Certified Public Accountant); one already has a job. Six more students graduated from Senior Secondary School and we are waiting for exam results to see how many are candidates for further study.
On the other hand, we already have appeals to support 17 new students, and that is before the School Management Committee at St. Therese’s makes their requests for new support. And of course if some of our graduates from 12th grade qualify for college, the cost of their education will quadruple.
Working with the Catholic Education Secretariat has been a real blessing; they are completely dedicated to educating children of all tribes and religions. Under their agreement with the Gambian government, they are administering 14 schools around the country; the curriculum is the same as the other public schools (including Islamic Studies and Christian Religious Studies). The teachers are assigned from the same teacher pool as other schools, but the administration is far better. (Under a similar agreement, I am told that the Methodists are administering Armitage Senior Secondary School, where most of our high school students attend.)
This means that by working with the Secretariat, we have the means to relatively easily support students at other schools under their jurisdiction. But it also means that Secretariat staff members are bringing to our attention especially compelling cases from around the country, and appealing for our support. While our primary focus will continue to be the students at St. Therese’s, if we have the capacity, we certainly would like to support equally needy cases elsewhere in the country.
GambiaRising started the 2010-11 school year supporting 60 students, and by the end of the school year we were supporting 85. We began the following year at 84, and ended in June with 114. We decided that our goal this year will be to support a minimum of 150 students which, after subtracting our recent graduates, is a net of 43 new students. Almost certainly we will have more than 43 worthy new appeals, which tend to build as the year goes on and families run out of money.
To keep pace, we will have to expand our donor/sponsor base.
GambiaRising began as an informal group of my personal friends who sent donations for students in need while I was Country Director for Peace Corps The Gambia. By the time I left at the end of 2009, my friends and I were supporting 23 students. When we formally organized GambiaRising in 2010, it was still largely an ever-expanding circle of my friends (and relatives). But as generous as my friends are, that can only take us so far. Some of the most encouraging moments during Father Jean’s visit were lunches and dinners in which he met friends of friends, several of whom are now supporting students. And our last dinner, high on a hill overlooking Marin County, was at the home of a friend of an old friend, who had just started sponsoring two girls and whom I had not yet met. And she in turn had invited two of her friends to meet with us. This is the kind of spreading the word that will allow our circle to expand at a pace that keeps up with the appeals that are due to start coming in.
In another encouraging development, seven returned Peace Corps volunteers from The Gambia are now supporting students, and more than thirty pitched in at Christmas time to help the goddaughterof a Gambian staff member who was about to be sent home from the U.S. when she fell short of the funds while at junior college in Minnesota. Two new returned volunteers have joined our Board of Trustees as well.
And so, instead of bracing myself for the disappointment and sense of sadness that I was steeling myself for as we enter the new school year, I find myself hopeful. Hopeful that, with the help of not only friends, but their friends, we will be able to reach enough new supporters to be able to take care of the most worthy of the appeals that I know are about to come. In the next two weeks, I will send out our fall appeal. If you are already sponsoring one or more students, thanks in advance; what you can do in addition is simply forward that email to some of your friends. Let them know why you are supporting the program, and these kids. Our new monthly donation program makes it so painless to give: as little as $12.50 per month for a child in grades K-6.
It takes so little to change a life.
Thanks to everyone for helping to get us this far, and for helping to expand the circle so we can support more deserving kids this coming year.