The end of the line

This will be the final newsletter from Sohm Schools Support as we wind down the charity and suggest to our donors that they stop giving to us. We have a healthy bank balance, which we will continue to use over the next 3-4 years to support some of our principal functions and areas of assistance.

We want to express our heartfelt gratitude to all who have supported us during the 13 years of our operation. We are immensely proud of the outcomes and owe much of our success to your unwavering support. We are deeply grateful to you all for helping us improve the lives of thousands of young people in The Gambia.

Pupils at the Lower Basic school expressing their appreciation for the work and donations supplied via SSS

We have not visited the country for almost three years, and although we still have good friends and contacts and healthy relationships with individuals and institutions there, we sense that we have all moved on.

We understand that circumstances change, and we respect the decisions of our colleagues and supporters. Over the last twelve months, our key contacts in the schools and regional education office have moved to new jobs elsewhere, our critical European partner, Jersey Gambia Schools Trust, is winding down, one of our key UK supporters has died, and the circumstances of another have changed significantly, reducing the financial support they can offer.

Circumstances have coalesced to make a wind-down the most sensible option. For the future, and with our residual funds, we will continue with our stationery donations for Sohm Lower Basic school and support First Aid 4 Gambia – a fantastic small UK charity that offers first aid training, equipment, and supplies to the school (thus providing the only real and permanent medical facility in the village). We will also offer financial assistance to educate the children of two families we have supported for 14 years.

One of those families is desperately poor, and we began by providing the funds to send their then seven-year-old daughter to school. Because of their poverty, she had never been to school but is now on the brink of going to nursing college. Her younger sister is an outstanding talent and is regularly top or second in class at the best state school in the country. Our help to these two young women/girls will make a massive difference to their and their families' lives.

The second family we support are the children of the man who was the backbone of all we did in the Gambia – Lamin Saidy. He was a modest but very focused and professional teacher when we first met and delivered on the ground; with the funds we supplied, almost all the achievements we list below. He is now an outstanding head at the country’s largest primary school, supervising several nursery schools. He is an exceptional asset to the Gambian education service, and we have been delighted to support two of his children through teacher training college, where they have continued his mission.

We are proud to assist both families.

Thirteen years of achievement

Many of you will have watched our story over the years, but what follows is a summary of what the support you have offered has enabled.

·         We have raised around £100,000, which has largely been spent on the structural improvements of three schools: Sohm Lower Basic (primary), Sohm Senior Secondary, and Sukuta Lower Basic.

·         The money has come from many sources, the most significant of which has been Rotary International. It has provided over a third of what we have raised and contributed significantly to our most ambitious project (see below).

·         Gift Aid has been significant and probably accounts for another £12,000 of our income over the years.

·         Derwentwater School in Acton and Beech Hill Community School in Luton have both “twinned” with Sohm Lower Basic School and raised around £15,000 via “Gambia Days” for the school. Sandra’s daughter, Natalie, taught at the first and is deputy head at the second. She was instrumental in gaining her schools’ support for this fundraising. Some years ago, she also gave up some holiday time with a colleague to do some teacher training for the staff in Sohm. We are very grateful for her help with SSS.

"Gambia days" in Acton and Luton raised £15,00 to support Sohm schools and brought "twinning" between the UK schools and the Gambian ones, to the benefit of all pupils at the schools

·         We have held garden parties, auctions (including tickets for gigs like Bruce Springsteen concerts and golfing days), and other fund-raising events. A couple of friends (Elin and Paul) had a collection for the charity at their wedding, and friends and family of another—Brian Bamford—made generous donations as a tribute to him, in lieu of flowers, etc., when he died a couple of years ago.

·         As many as 40 people sponsored individual students in the charity's early days when all Gambian children had to pay school fees. Each sponsor received annual school reports and letters of thanks from the students. Once school fees were abolished in the country, funds were directed elsewhere within the schools.

·         Working with other organisations inside and outside The Gambia has been crucial. We have worked very closely and collaboratively with regional directors of education to mutual benefit and the significant advantage of the schools we have supported. We established an essential and productive relationship with the third-sector Swedish/Gambian construction company Future in Our Hands, which delivered on all the construction projects detailed below. They worked on time, to spec, and on budget—which was hugely important when we were trying to direct activity from 3,000 miles away.

Sohm pupils wearing football kit donated to SSS by Football Gambia and Kit Aid

·         Key UK charities have been significant, too. The Jersey Gambia Schools Trust and First Aid 4 Gambia have already been mentioned, but Football Gambia and Kit Aid have also been important. The former provided free container space for us to get materials and donations to the country from the UK over many years, and the latter supplied over 100 football kits that were very gratefully received by schools and students alike.

·         We received generous donations of computers (over 70) and related equipment, including printers, scanners, and memory sticks (over 200), from supporters and over 2,000 surplus books and laboratory equipment from schools as they restocked at the end of their academic years. All of which were received with delight and enthusiasm. Over thirty bikes and surplus hiking and camping equipment from Woodcraft Folk were given.

Generous donations of bikes, computers, books etc being transported from container space provided by Football Gambia to Sohm

·         All the direct support to the schools and their pupils listed below was delivered in response to requests for that support from the schools’ senior staff.

·         We supplied new textbooks in every subject so that all pupils could take advantage of them at Sohm Senior Secondary school and stationery every year to both it and the Lower Basic school.

Some of the stationery we supply to Sohm Lower Basic school each year

·         For several years, we paid for an annual trip to the (small) country’s significant points of interest for primary school leavers. This was the first time many of them had left their village.

·         We have been able to support the Lower Basic school with printing needs to support mock exams and pay for 2-hour homework clubs each week for children who cannot work in peace at home. Similarly, for several years, we paid to enable remedial classes in English and maths to be delivered for pupils facing public examinations at the senior school.

Sohm pupils winning national school cookery contest, after receiving kitchen equipment supplied by SSS

·         We paid for the re-equipment of the domestic science rooms in the senior school, and the next year, it won prizes in national schools’ cooking competitions!

·         We bought the Lower Basic school’s first TV and projector and were able to
supply the school with several relevant educational DVDs.

Children watching the school's first TV (supplied by SSS), on furniture in a classroom all renovated by SSS

·         We undertook significant structural repairs in the Lower Basic School, so over the course of four years, all classrooms were significantly repaired, redecorated, and refurbished furniture supplied.

·         We replaced unhygienic toilet blocks in both the Sohm Lower Basic and Senior Secondary schools and added standpipes with running water in key points within the grounds.

·         During the COVID epidemic, we provided the school with many face masks, hand gel, and face visors, which enabled the school to function through most of the period.

Masks, visors and hand gel provided during COVID, to help school continue to function. No fatalities or serious cases recorded in the schools

·         We paid for the introduction of electricity for the Lower Basic school and the teachers’ accommodation and, for a while, paid the electricity running costs. We refurbished the dilapidated teachers' accommodation.

·         We rebuilt and furnished the sick room at the Lower Basic school and rescued the library from termite infestation, restoring it to an active working area for pupils.

·         In our largest project at the Lower Basic school, we replaced the dangerous and abandoned school dining hall with a brand new, £25,000 multi-purpose school/community hall used for dining, sports, assemblies, meetings, and community events.

A school assembly in the new hall, build and paid for by SSS, with pupils sitting on chairs paid for by sponsors' donations

·         These interventions in Sohm have, cumulatively, enabled the Lower Basic school to rise from the bottom of regional Ofsted-type tables in the country to the top.

·         Based on the successes above, the regional education director asked us to lead a joint SSS/Rotary International project at a 2,000-pupil Lower Basic school in Sekuta. We completely revamped the school at a cost of around £45,000. It was our biggest-ever project, which was completed successfully in 2022. This brought new toilets, a better water system, a new sick room, an expanded computer suite, a hygienic food serving area, and an infestation-free library to the school.

Expanded computer suite and hardware supplied by SSS

·         Our efforts in fund-raising and on-the-ground delivery in Gambian schools have been featured in over 20 news reports in The Gambia and the UK, including on Gambian TV and the online versions of the UK’s Guardian and Mail-On-Line.

An example of some of the press SSS has generated. This from the Luton Herald

We have not visited The Gambia since the Sukuta project was signed off, but now we feel that we can manage our smaller range of commitments in the schools we support fairly readily from England. Therefore, we will continue arms-length support for the schools and are unlikely to visit the country again.

An appropriate time to wind down.

Thank you for your attention to the above, which is not sent as a self-congratulatory eulogy but as a statement of thanks for all you have helped us do and a reminder that small projects can make significant differences.

 

John and Sandra