Author: Girls Take Action In The Gambia

We're very grateful to WaterJel for their generous donation of a whole pallet of burn dressings and treatments to go to clinics in The Gambia. We will carry a small amount of it with us then the rest will go on a container which is being sent by our friends at Project Gambia in Sunderland.

We had our final team briefing on 5th March. We had oodles of resources to share out to carry and then we did lots of practice sessions. We're excited to leave now!

Now that it is only just over 8 weeks until our trip, we've started ordering all the resources we will need to deliver our peer education sessions. So far we've got: 10 small resuscitation dolls 4 circuit boards Billy bones lifesized skeleton and body parts Giant jaw models (for oral hygiene demos) Giant demo toothbrushes Disclosing tablets Mirrors Badges Neckerchiefs We have negotiated some...

We are delighted that on 23rd January the FCO changed their advice for The Gambia, stating they “no longer advise against travel to The Gambia; the situation has stabilised and the possibility of a military intervention is no longer likely”. We have spoken to Girlguiding, our insurers, Thomas Cook and the Gunjur Project and we are delighted to announce that our trip is back on! We’ve...

The President of The Gambia Yahya Jammeh has been in power for 22 years, since he took over in a military coup. He was defeated in the elections of December 2016 by Adama Barrow, but has been refusing to relinquish power.  On 19th January Mr Barrow is due to take office, but due to the uncertainty around the situation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has decided to...

Our 3rd team briefing started with some more team building, which is so important when we don't see each other so often. We used a game which we will play with the Gambian Guides, where there are teams and they have to build a structure which is called out by the facilitator. Here, we have a toilet and a tree! We had a hygienist come and talk to us about oral hygiene, so that we could plan a peer...

For our 2nd team briefing, we made a weekend of it - staying at our county residential centre, Pettypool. We started with some team building games, where each team had to choose a piece of music then be the band who are performing it. As well as continuing to build and strengthen our team, the main purpose of the weekend was to make a start on writing the peer education sessions we will deliver...

The Gunjur Girl Guides who we are supporting and working with have been out doing their first piece of community action. They've been litter picking and cleaning in the area where they live. We're so proud of them!