Child Youth Support and Rural Development Agency

Child Youth Support and Rural Development Agency, (TANGO), focuses on child/youth support and rural development, including basic education for children and skills training for all.

It also works on health and family planning projects. It supports horticultural development projects and adoption of improved farming techniques, programs to arrest soil degradation and deforestation and to implementation of ecological intervention systems

Youth Empowerment Network, Parklands, South Africa

Youth Empowerment Network work creatively with young disadvantaged and unemployed South Africans, to overcome inner oppression, and develop self-confidence, lifeskills, and leadership qualities, as the bridge to a productive life.

The mission of the Youth Empowerment Network is to empower out of school and out of work youth that are at risk in South Africa. Particularly from the disadvantaged areas, the combination of an inadequate education, depressed socio-economic circumstances and low employment prospects, make young people vulnerable to temptations such as crime and drugs.

The youth Empowerment Network aims to achieve this by providing bridging programmes that will prepare participants to enter proactively into life and work, and by motivating participants to take charge the participants to take charge of their lives and in particular take their next steps towards creatively securing their economic independence.

Schools for Progress

Schools for Progress (email link – there is no website yet), is a registered charity in The Gambia and in the UK.

It was started in 1986 by two people working in the Atlantic Hotel.

The original objects were to assist poor children to go to school instead of begging from tourists on the beach.

Over the years the number of children being helped has steadily grown.

Currently we are sponsoring 33 children at all levels from Nursery to Senior school, (and have a queue waiting).

The Charity has also undertaken small projects including rebuilding the kitchen and adding a new roof at Bijilo School, building an extra classroom and furnishing it at the Pentecostal Nursery School in Banjul, supplying New Yundum School with a classroom of new (16) locally made metal framed desks and refurbishing the toilets at the Albion School in Banjul.

Schools for Gambia

Schools for Gambia, (new website), is a UK Charity working mainly with rural schools.

They also sponsor children and currently 80 are sponsored through supporters of the charity.

They concentrate on one project at a time seeing it through to completion so that they can control how the money is being spent.

They send school materials out to Gambia and have been supplied with seeds by Suttons for vegetable gardens at Jinak and maybe all the other schools they help.

National Youth Council – Gambia

National Youth Council – Gambia Apart from co-ordinating, planning, programming, monitoring and evaluating all youth programmes, projects and activities, the National Youth Council (NYC) as an independent autonomous body is also mandated by an act of the National Assembly to advise Government on all youth matters in The Gambia.

Gambia Youth Federation

Gambia Youth Federation, (TANGO), undertakes to support the socio-economic development of young men and women, to assist communities to achieve self-sufficiency through self-help and to assist in improving the equality of life in rural communities

Education Aid Africa

Education Aid Africa, is a UK Charity working mainly in The Gambia but also in Sierra Leone, in close partnership with the Catholic missions.

They collect donated new and used educational items and ship them out to the schools.

They assist 80 mission schools catering for over 30,000 children aged 5 to 18+, and 5 Vocational schools.

The charity runs a friendship scheme partnering a school, group or parish in UK with a school in Gambia.

The object is to give UK pupils some idea of life in a developing country and the partner school some knowledge of life in UK by exchanging letters and photographs.

It also provides UK pupils with a practical opportunity to help others.

Education for Development

Education for Development is an independent development charity offering training, research and consultancy in non-formal education and training for adults and children.

They work alongside those engaged in development programmes both overseas and in the UK, to help them to develop their own capacity to deliver effective, quality development programmes.

They are involved with Deafaxin their current work in The Gambia.

Gambian Schools Trust – Manjai Kunda

Gambian Schools Trust – Manjai Kunda The Gambian Schools Trust, a registered UK charity, was set up two years ago by Christine Schofield and Kathy Tristram, following a visit to Manjai Kunda in connection with The Children Of The Gambia.

The school supported by this charity was in danger of closure because of mounting debts, including rents.

Teachers were working for nothing and had not been paid for several months.

Christine used her management experience to plan ways in which finances could be better managed, while Kathy (a trained teacher) ran workshops and training sessions to introduce teachers to different methods of engaging their students.

The charity has been working alongside The Children Of The Gambia, initially to clear debts and to find sponsors to pledge as little as two pounds a month to pay the teachers’ wages.

This was achieved within three months. In 2002 they were able to begin giving support to a second school. The main aim now is to raise money for teachers’ wages and major resources.

The charity’s founders are therefore engaged in identifying schools where lack of funding for teachers could bring about closure, and in thinking of ways to resolve the fact that children who can’t pay to attend school are simply sent home.

Friends of the Gambian African Christian School

Friends of the Gambian African Christian School is a UK based charity set up to help educate children of the Gambia, in particular those who attend the GACS run by the Reverend Richard Jackson.

At the present time they are a small charity run by a few people.

Their initial goal is to raise enough money to construct a school building in the village of Essau on the piece of land given to the Reverend by the village chief.

With the school building in place they will then need to supply funds to pay teachers and provide school equipment.