BADMINTON IN THE GAMBIA

"How did the trip go?" many people have asked us upon our return.

It was a truly amazing experience and far exceeded our expectations.

Lesley, Tim, Ben and Sam (we became known as the Badminton Family!!) worked in 2 very different schools.

Youna Lower Basic School is a community - funded school, which means that the only form of income the school has is from those children who are fortunate to have parents who can afford to send them for their education. Many, many children are not so lucky and I have since found out that it costs £40 per YEAR to send a child through school. Facilities here are zero!!

Tujereng Upper Basic School, on the other hand, is funded by the Government. It did have a multi-purpose hall which provided the facility to play Badminton in out of the wind, but for all of that, everything here was extremely basic also.

At Youna, the initial reception we encountered wasn't quite what we imagined it would be.

Everyone was very subdued but very welcoming and just for a fraction of a second the seed of doubt was in our minds.

However, within half an hour and the children having been shown the basic grips and serve we introduced them to our manic run - around game!! Well, they loved this and soon got into the swing of things thereon in (literally!!)

The 2nd day saw an emphatic improvement in both the boys and girls abilities (despite the wind) and I even managed to get the Headmaster playing - albeit a little reluctantly to start with! After 25minutes of playing he announced that he had thoroughly enjoyed taking part and would now introduce the sport into the P.E. lessons over the next 2 weeks.

YES, SUCCESS!!!!

At Tujering we had the same level of success and both schools will soon be in a position to have competitions against each other.

All of the staff and pupils are a credit to their schools and so Badminton - we are pleased to announce - has been enthusiastically and successfully received and introduced into schools in the Gambia!!

Our next project - PHASE 2- is to raise the sum of £10,000 in order to build a multi - purpose hall for the school at Youna. This will let the children continue to play the sport in all weathers, including the rainy season, which lasts for 5 months.

The Headmaster here at Youna is so enthusiastic about the project that, basically, he has put the building of 3 new classrooms on hold in favour of the hall and wants to continue to build up the link now established between Youna, Tujereng and the William Farr school.

At both schools we were able to leave 20 racquets, 5 tubes of shuttles, nets and posts and some extremely happy, smiling and enthusiastic teenagers (13-17 years old was our target age)

We had a fantastic host from the charity we are working with - Gambian Tourist Support - Schools And Education (GTS) so our thanks go to him for looking after us.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us to get this ambitious project off the ground.

We need to purchase 5330 bricks and 457 bags of cement to kick start the project !!!!!!

Contact Lesley on 01673 863265.