Successful return - after two years!

I have just returned from a brief, successful, trip to the Gambia - following a two year absence, for COVID-related reasons - and feel there are good stories to tell about the schools in Sohm and beyond.

I'll concentrate on Sohm in this post, and deal with our Rotary-supported project in Sukuta, of which I've written much over the last year or so, in a blog in a couple of weeks.

Senior management team, with Rotary and Beech Hill logos

Firstly, although the Sohm schools were closed for nine months, because of the local COVID lockdown, there seemed to have been few - if any - serious cases of the virus in the village. The Lower Basic (primary) school's staff, however, were very greatful for the supplies of masks and sanitiser that we were able to get to the school, via our good friends at the Scottish charity First Aid for Gambia.

 

Pupils and staff with SSS-supplied anti-COVID sanitisers and masks

 

Before I left the UK, the pupils at Beech Hill in Luton, with which Sohm LBS is twinned, produced some lovely artwork and letters for me to take to Sohm. The Gambian youngsters were delighted, and below are some photos of some proudly displaying their incoming correspondence.

Some of the Beech Hill letters to Sohm

and more ....

and more ....

and more!

The Sohm children have responded in kind, and within two days turned around a similarly impressive set of letters and art work, which we will share with Beech Hill, when they have their annual "Gambia Day", in April.

There has been plenty of work taking place on the ground in the Sohm LBS, to which we have contributed 50% of the cost, over the last two years. A six-classroom block, which was partially damaged by a hurricane two years ago, has now been completely restored and renovated.  It is looking good, as the photos below show.

A local craftworker was also commissioned to repair over 100 pieces of broken school furniture, at an average cost of £8 per item, and with the chairs we supplied two years ago, the school is now well stocked with necessary furniture.

And nursery children - note reconditioned, shiny furniture!

 

 

 

This means that in the ten years of our involvement with Sohm LBS, we have restored and upgraded every building in the 500-pupil school - and the place is looking very smart.

We are delighted to report that our previous, large, building project - the new school hall - is now being well used. Its kitchen, which was part of the construction, is a busy source of nuitritional cooking, much of the food for which has been produced in the school's garden.

 

 

New school kitchen - pots bubbling away with veg grown in the school's garden

As we do every year, we made a donation of almost £1k of stationery to the school. This meets the whole requirements for the 500 children and staff there for the year. So, there are exercise books, pens, pencils, crayons for the pupils and flip charts, marker pens, chalks and record books, duplicating paper, printer inks etc. for the staff.

Below is a photo of some pupils displaying some of this donation. We have had a long relationship with a local stationer - Prime Stationers -  in The Gambia, who has always given us extremenly competitive rates for our purchases. This year he made a significant personal contribution, to top up our donation. So, we were delighted to have some of the pupils wave some of his advertisng material, by way of thanks. Enlarged copies of some of these photos now adorn his shop, with the strapline "Delighted to support the education of local children" Win:win, here! 

Annual stationery donation, assisted by our friends from Prime Stationers

 One other donation to our charity must be recorded. One of our dearest supporters, concious that donations of clothing to developing countries rarely include underwear, was determined to redress the issue and purchased a large quanity of bras, knickers and underpants for what turned out to be a hugely grateful bunch of local recipients (modesty prevents us showing them in action!). It really was a bit of a struggle to get everything out there, and within airplane luggage restrictions - but we are glad we managed it! Delighted as we are to have assisted this very thoughtful donation, we are not opening up a clothes donation facility for the future! In previous years we have had access to free container space. Unfortunately, we no longer do.

Our ten-year involvement with the school has had a remarkable impact on its educational performance.  All schools in The Gambia are given an annual Scorecard, by the country's version of Ofsted.  Below is Sohm's most recent score card.  It has - quite simply - been turned from a run of the mill, rural, back water school, to the exemplar primary school in its district and top of cluster groups and other measurement devices.

Impressive Lower Basic school "Scorecard"

The senior school in the village of Sohm has been badly run for the last four years, and we have refused to work with a head whom we did not trust. He has now been replaced and the school is in the temporary charge of two long-serving deputies, with whom we have always had a very good relationship - Nicholas Mendy and Mama Gomez - see pictured below. We look forward to re-engagement with the school, staff and pupils.

New interim management at secondary school, Mama and Nicholas - back in safe hands

The senior school has good facilities, many of which we, and our partners from the Jersey Gambia Schools Trust, have contributed to, over the years.

We are very pleased to say that the Education Regional Director, now he has replaced the former head, is determined to turn the senior school into a district school of excellence in science and technology (because it has good facilities, and a well educated intake).

The two schools in Sohm do, however, have teacher recruitment and retention difficulties; because they are in a relatively remote area, and the accommodation available to staff is poor. We are currently working with the Regional Director on submitting a bid to a significant Dutch charity, to create new teacher accommodation for upto 40 staff, in the village, in unused land and premises already owned by the ministry.

  

Potential location for new teaching accommodation - we're in talks!

We'll let you know how we get on!

New term, new start

Classroom refurbishment almost complete

As the new school year starts in Sohm, we are delighted to provide a progress report on our ambitious Sohm 2020 project.

This year we have established two great partnership projects to help raise funds for our charity: Beech Hill Primary school in Luton and Redbridge Rotary club. As a result of this, we embarked on our most ambitious project to date - which we have labelled Sohm 2020. Our object is to raise £20,000 by the year 2020.

Friendship agreement between
 Beech Hill and Sohm LBS

We have pledged to repair and refurbish six classrooms in a block suffering from serious decay, and to completely replace the school's condemned-as-unfit kitchen and dining hall area with a new kitchen and fit-for-purpose multi- functional (dining, sports, assembly, meeting, prayers, performance etc) hall.

Progress to date has exceeded our wildest expectations.  As we have previously mentioned, Beech Hill school has established a friendship agreement with the Sohm Lower Basic school. The Luton school held a fund raising day towards the end of last term for Sohm - and have now raised almost £5,000 for the school.

Our good friend Tony Betts has become the President of Redbridge Rotary club this year and nominated SSS as one of his three charities (Rotary International and a local Redbridge one, being the other two).

Big thanks to Redbridge Rotary club

Generous funding from Rotary has meant that we have been able to get a move on.  As Sohm LBS returns after the summer break, we are delighted to be able to share that progress, via photos, of the refurbishment of the six-classroom block - nearing completion, as I write.

The four photos, below are of the sorry state of the block before the refurbing over the summer break.  

The next four photos show repining, repairs and painting work under way, over the summer holiday.

The six classroom block's refurbishment is ready for re-occupation, after the summer break, thanks to the hard work of contractors - Future In Our Hands - and the generous funding of Beech Hill and Redbridge Rotary.

Estimates have been provided for replacing the unfit kitchen and dining hall block, and we are working with the school to firm up their requirements for the replacement block. Below is a reminder of the dreadful state of the block to be replaced.

Unstable and unsafe roof

Holes in walls and door frames ready to fall out

Kitchen, unfit for purpose

Roof in danger of collapse

Fixed concrete blocks for dining area,
meaning it is completely unusable for anything else

The contractors, meanwhile, have not let the grass grow under their feet on this; they have already demolished the unfit block, ready for constructing the new on.

No real pressure on us, then - just another £10k to find over the next eighteen months, in order to replace it!

Come on - dig behind the backs of your sofas!

October 2018 update

The great work that Beech Hill school, Luton has done in helping restore the classrooms at Sohm Lower Basic school was recognised on the 4 October edition of The Luton Herald and Post.Thanks to them for the coverage - and of course, to Beech Hill for providing them with a great story!

Sohm 2020

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.