The Gambia - quick update on progress!

by John & Sandra Walker

OUR most successful visit to Sohm, to date, will be the feature of a series of articles over the coming months.  The achievements of the trip, however, can be expressed in 10 headlines and photos, below.

1. Given a great welcome by the school.

2. Witnessed transformed classroom block, courtesy of the generosity of pupils from Beech Hill school, Luton and Redbridge Rotary Club.

3. Saw superb delivery of First Aid training to 10 adults and three pupils, plus the delivery of upto date stock of medical supplies, from the ever-excellent First Aid 4 Gambia.

4. Signed off plans for a new 30 metre hall and kitchen block - our biggest project yet - to be built this year.

5. Delivered £1k+ of stationery to meet all needs of 450 pupils and their staff for the next year.

6. Saw delighted pupils and teachers captivated by some Jolly Phonics DVD's, we took over - courtesy of some e.bay bargains in the UK

7. Picked up over 90 letters, drawings and photos from the pupils to take to their pen pals in Luton.

8. Sourced potential furniture - with ideas of how to pay for it - for the new hall, for next year.

9. Spoke to Banjul Rotary Club, about possible future co-operation.

10. Tracked down possible future training packages for the staff at Sohm Lower Basic School.

Future blogs will add flesh to the bones of the above achievements.

As ever, we welcome your comments and donations - to help us continue to change lives in the small Gambian village of Sohm.

John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen

"Sohm 2020" NEWSLETTER

  Below is the latest newsletter from Sohm Schools Support. In it you will find details of some very real recent successes and our most ambitious project yet: Sohm 2020. This is our project to raise £20k by 2020, in order to completely refurb 6 classrooms and demolish a condemned school kitchen and dining area, and replace it with a fit for purpose multi-functional school hall.

WE are delighted to announce the launch of "Sohm 2020", our drive to raise £20,000 over the next two years to fulfil two extremely ambitious projects.

Our sights have been raised as a result of an extremely fulfilling partnership we have struck with Beech Hill Primary school in Luton. 

We have also been encouraged by help from some other very generous donors and a working arrangement with a Swedish charity in The Gambia, that specialises in training and employing Gambian construction labour to work on not-for-profit projects, at cost price.

Our Beech Hill partnership

Beech Hill primary school in Luton is a large school in a modest, mainly Muslim area of the town. Its recently appointed deputy head, Natalie Carson, is daughter of SSS co-founder, Sandra Walker.  Natalie has previously worked with SSS in Sohm, when five years ago she and a colleague, undertook some training of teachers in the Gambian village.

Friendship cemented in Sohm  with Beech Hill school, Luton

In her new role, in Luton, she has persuaded the school to "adopt" the Lower Basic school in Sohm. This will involve developing twinning arrangements, exchanging correspondence with individual pupils, exchanging curriculum materials and helping to fund raise on behalf on Sohm LBS. 

Beech Hill has already raised almost £1,500 for Sohm in the six months since the arrangement was agreed, and has committed itself to assist the school for upto three years. Sohm has also adopted the twinning enthusiastically, as the photo, above - taken in February - shows.

Beech Hill has other, exciting, twinning and fund raising events planned over the following months - and we will keep you up to speed on their progress.

Initial target - met!

Over the last year, our charity efforts have been focused on raising enough money to completely refurb and re-furnish a broken down classroom in a decaying block of six at the Lower Basic school.  Supporters have generously provided us with the £2,500 we felt necessary to undertake this task. And we thank them (they know who they are!), very sincerely for their generosity.

The six photos in this sequence  are of some of the damage to the  walls in the classrooms which will  be fixed, via steel girder supports in the six classrooms

Above and below - close ups of the  extent of the damage to the  walls, on the photo, two up

Your generosity will also pay to  replace the broken classroom  furniture, desks and chairs

Termite damage has made this, the  door to the deputy head's office,  unusable.  This will be fixed by September

We have, in fact, been able to raise twice that amount for this project! 

In January we were given an estimate, by the government's education building surveyor for refurbish and re-equipping the whole six-classroom block. We have given the spec to the local Swedish/Gambian charity, mentioned above and they have given us a cost price quotation for the work.

Working on a "matched-funding" basis with our colleagues from Jersey, we are delighted to announce that we have now collected enough to restore the whole six classroom block, and an office within it!

Work will commence at the end of the summer term and we hope everything will be complete in time for the pupils' return to school in September.

More innovative funding

Until two years ago we had free container space to ship donated items out to The Gambia.  This arrangement enabled us to take, among other items, a whole classroom computer suite, with associated equipment.

Stationery: donated ...

The "free passage" offer has, unfortunately ended. One of our long-time supporters, forgetful of this, however, donated a large supply of unwanted stationery to us, as he was closing down his stationery business. It would have been ideal for the children in Sohm - but the commercial transportation costs of getting it there would have been greater than it was realistically worth to the schools in the village.

... and transported.  That's another  classroom refurb paid for!

A generous, local-to-us, retailer stepped in and offered to buy the stock from us.  Friends and colleagues transported it free.  Result? Another few hundred pounds to help restore the classrooms! Thanks to all concerned in that transaction - on behalf of the children of Sohm Lower Basic school!

The big one!

Flushed with success, and some certainty about future levels of funding, we began exploratory talks, while in the Gambia earlier this year, about embarking on our most ambitious-to-date project. The demolition of the school's decrepit, unusable, 35-year old school kitchen and dining hall and replacement with a fit-for-purpose facility.

Above and below: the existing, but condemned  kitchen and dining room, from outside.  Note the interesting curvature of the roof!

It has been condemned and out of use for three years now. Even when it was operational the 'dining area' was inflexible, as the "furniture" consisted of immovable concrete blocks. In the absence of a proper kitchen and dining room, children have to make to with pieces of bread, dipped in a sauce, from outside stalls in the school grounds.

Complete with dilapidated windows - above - and holes in the wall (not ATM's unfortunately)  - below- you can put your fist through

Once more, we got the schools' building inspector to give us a price for demolition of the building and the reconstruction of a kitchen area and multi-functional hall.  The initial estimate is £20,000, inclusive.

The hall will have movable tables and chairs - so it can still be used as a dining area, and so much more.

The current kitchen area, above, with a close-up, below, of the cement units in which wood is  burned to heat the pots to cook the rice

The furniture can be moved to one side - so offering the school its first ever: assembly hall, indoor gym, meetings room, performance area and prayer room.

Above - the condemned dining hall, with  immovable cement "furniture". Below the outdoor  "dining" arrangements the children are making  do with in the absence of the unfit dining hall

We aim to raise £10,000 over the next 18 months to pay for this - and so, with our Jersey partners, reach our £20k by '20 target.

Your help - as ever, would be much appreciated! And, as ever, we will keep you up-to-date on progress with the project.

 

John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen

******

Sohm Schools Support: A big thank you!

   "Below is the latest newsletter from Sohm Schools Support, the African educational charity run by Northern Voices contributor and former co-editor of Rochdale's Alternative Paper, John Walker and his wife, Sandra.  Full details of the charity can be found here: www.SohmSchoolsSupport..org.uk"

Most significant among the donations has been one we have received from Redbridge Rotary Club, for £250. The Club has been good friends of this charity, and we are always delighted to return, each year, to give them an update on life in the schools in Sohm, and to be able to show, quite explicitly, what their donations have funded.

Redbridge Rotary, significant  donors to SSS. Thank you!

  Progress this year with the Lower Basic school

As far as the Lower Basic (primary) school is concerned, this year we have been delighted - with our partners from Jersey - to fund the complete renovation of the outside toilet blocks of the school. We will publish photos of the completed project when we receive them, but understand from the school that the work has been satisfactorily completed.

Broken outdoor toilets at Sohm LBS  - now refurbished - thanks to SSS!

We also funded an internet router for the school.  MaLamin Gibba, the school's deputy head wrote to say:

We are learning to use it and in time, we will come to know much about it and be able to use it in the best interest of the school and the pupils.

  

We provided a much needed new printer scanner for the school. This enables them to print their own materials rather than having to travel the 15 miles to the regional office in Brikama to get it done. MaLamin, again:    

Having it eases all the hitches we were encountering in the previous years. This year we not only prepared and printed examination questions but we are also able to prepare materials we use in our administrative works as well as print schemes of work and lesson plans.

Perhaps our largest, on-going commitment to the school has been to fund a "homework club" for what we thought would be two hours a week, after school, for pupils who struggle to get space or quietness at home to study.  So popular has this become, that it is now running three nights a week, and is always packed!

Homework club, in SSS-funded  refurbished library

Most of the staff live in the village, and they continued to operate the scheme, on a voluntary basis, over the summer holidays, so that the scheme did not lose momentum.  We are obviously delighted by this!

In conclusion, MaLamin says a big than you to all our supporters: 

"Can you just imagine how much you are doing for the school? The great work you are doing for the school cannot easily be forgotten. They are visible more so, everything you do is put in our records and filed. Therefore, the amount spent on cash power (electricity supply, which we also fund - having wired the school up two years ago) is all receipted and filed. At this juncture we have nothing but to say thank you to you and all those who supporting us through you."

Deputy head MaLamin acting as "patient"  in recent SSS-funded First Aid training day

  Secondary school progress

The school has benefitted from a major classroom extension building this year - financed by our Jersey partners. And, splendid it looks too.

New Jersey-funded teaching  block in Senior Secondary school

Our major contribution to the school - apart from our annual stationery donation and the sponsorship of a number of poorer pupils - has been the funding of "additional classes" available for ALL students, of one hour per week in each of the core subjects of English and Maths, at the end of the school day.

As we have previously mentioned, progress in improving public examination results for the school since our involvement, five years ago, has been quite remarkable.  The school has shot up regional league tables and from being very much at the foot of these tables, it is now in the top two or three of performers.

The subjects where least progress has been made, however, has been in English and Maths - arguably the two most important - certainly when it comes to the jobs market.

Eighteen months ago we set out ambitious plans to address this, but funding (jointly with our Jersey partners) the "remedial" classes as they were originally dubbed. They proved very difficult to get off the ground, initially. Then, when they were up and running, the school - like all others in The Gambia - was hit by the country's political instability last December, and effectively closed for a month.

75% attendance at voluntary, extra-curricular,  SSS-funded additional classes in English and Maths

So, a second start was made this new year, and we are delighted to report on progress. We are provided with monthly attendance sheets and progress records - as part of our conditions for funding the scheme. These are subject to spot checks and independent verification by our Jersey partner's local agent in The Gambia.

The results have been most pleasing. Although the scheme is entirely voluntary and extra-curricular, average attendance at the classes has exceed over 75% in both subjects in every month, bar one, since its re-introduction.

The subject teachers and the school's principal review overall progress with the scheme each month and re-tweak it and set targets to be reached.  Regular reports go to the schools governors, who are delighted with the scheme's effectiveness.

This scheme has taken a while to come to fruition, but perseverance is showing pleasing signs of success.  The acid test, of course, will be in next year's public examination results.  We are crossing our fingers!

John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen

---