Please help give upcountry teachers a place to live!
Housing for Upcountry Gambian Teachers
Rural families in The Gambia (mostly farmers) have many things working against them; dependence on the annual rains for their farming income; no access to electric power for most, lack of sanitation, and too-often, not even access to clean drinking water leads the country's qualified teachers to prefer to work in the peri-urban areas closer to the coast, where more amenities are abundant and the weather is milder. For upcountry young people, an education is a necessary ingredient on the path to a better life, so it is necessary to be able to attract qualified teachers to teach in upcountry schools. And so we are seeking to help the teachers of upcountry schools build housing for themselves.
St. John's School for the Deaf - Basse
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At the top of the list is St. John's School for the Deaf, which has opened a three-classroom branch in the Upper River Region capital of Basse. Classes are limited to 10 students per class. There are 9 grades, in double shifts, and the school has a capacity of 60 students. But the school has a crisis: teachers are having real problems finding housing near the school that they can afford.
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And so after dinner, the desks are pushed back, and the teachers spread mats on the floor to sleep.
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These are skilled teaching staff. Retaining teachers of any kind in rural schools is always a problem.
So the School Management Committee (parents, teachers, and community membets met with GambiaRising's Upcountry Coordinator:
So the School Management Committee (parents, teachers, and community membets met with GambiaRising's Upcountry Coordinator:
Could GambiaRising contribute funds to buy materials? If so, the parents and teachers would build the teachers' housing for the school. We said we would try. A returned Peace Corps volunteer and her mom offered to lead the fundraising campaign. The Secretariat contributed land. The parents and teachers started clearing it the next day.
To kick start the process, we found several villagers nearby who had hand-made bricks for sale, and bought all they had.
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We bought cement, sand, and gravel so the teachers and parents could start making the rest of the bricks they would need. A team began laying out the locations for the foundations. And the building began.
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To help these teachers and parents build teachers' quarters for their school:
St. Joseph's School for Girls (Basse)
We hoped to support up to four schools in total to build themselves housing. After St. John's was fully funded, we turned our attention to St. Joseph's School for Girls (Basse). This school is one of the most important in Basse, with 1,425 girls enrolled in its 6 grades.
The teachers at St. Joseph's are on Christmas break. When they heard we were going to try to raise funds for them, they began clearing land next to the school:
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When we brought the first bags of cement and other materials for making bricks, they got to work:
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Sare Ngai and Saruja
GambiaRising's upcountry program is based in the Fulladu West region of the Central River Region. Two schools in Fula Bantang ward are also benefiting from this initiative:
Sare Ngai Lower Basic School (Fulladu West, Central River Region)
Sare Ngai Lower Basic School (Fulladu West, Central River Region)
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Saruja Lower Basic School (Fulladu West, Central River Region)
In Saruja, the community decided to repair and re-purpose and abandoned building near the school.
In Saruja, the community decided to repair and re-purpose and abandoned building near the school.
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