Updated
June 9, 2005
Gambia Education Support - UK Charity Reg - Applied
Bakoteh Community Library Opens
GES Community Library Opens March 2005
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Getting ready to Open
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The Community arrives
Getting ready
The Head & GTS
Members
Discussing the future
Comments to GES
In March 2005 GTS opened a project that had been in the making for nearly two years The Bakoteh Community Library – within the school known as ‘The Reading Den’
The story behind this project is exactly what GTS is all about.
In 2002 we were contacted by a lady called Helen Scorer, she wanted to come and help in Gambia and joined GTS as a member.
We arranged a classroom assistant’s position at Bakoteh School.
Helen, who had never done any teaching was apprehensive, but settled in to Gambia and the school within days.
You can see Helen’s reports by clicking here.
When Helen left the school she asked the teachers what they really needed and a library was the answer.
On her return to UK Helen started to raise money, Helen’s brother Peter started to raise money and this was all sent to GTS and the foundations and walls started to creep up, as more money arrived the building took shape.
Late in 2004 Jack and Pauline Smith made a massive donation - enabling the building to continue.
GTS hosts birthday party for The Smiths
and friends & invite the press for the handing over of money collected
by Jack when his wife did a sponsored cycle ride to raise money for a
GTS project - see also Press Coverage
By January 2005 the walls were
completed and the roofing beams in place, the roof cladding went on and
the building looked complete, but it still needed windows, doors shelving,
flooring and out of the blue . . . .
well actually across the Sahara came two knightesses not on camels but
in an old car having completed the Plymouth Dakar charity Rally.
Jo and Ruth had raised over £1000 for GTS quite apart form the money that went to Gambian charities via the sale of all the rally cars by public auction.
The money for the doors and floor, paint and shelves had finally arrived and days before I left Gambia Kabirou Jabang (the GTS director in Gambia & known by everyone as Kabs) announced that the Library would open and the Gambian Press would be there. As a first for GTS not only the Gambian radio but also the Gambian TV service.
GTS has had ‘shouts’ on Westcoast Radio in the past but this was altogether something different, Gambian TV showed the opening ceremony several times over the next few weeks and the papers all ran the story.
For GTS it was the part completion of a wonderful project that we would never have started if we had wondered where the money would come from.
I say "part completion"
because we now need masses more books than what seemed a
house full of boxes overflowing with books . . . .
. . . . as the pictures show they filled very few of the shelves.
We hope to fill those shelves with books and although books are heavy if every tourist just took a couple and left then at our GTS Office or Restaurant we’d soon fill those shelves and have enough to start a new library somewhere else.
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