GAmbia Project

Volunteer Projects:

Volunteer Projects: Our program visits multiple towns and villages, speaking to students about building sound characters and becoming real and authentic individuals. Volunteers develop skits based on themes surrounding character education, and interact with students in a healthy and positive way.

Character Education Workshops: Our program visits multiple towns and villages, speaking to students about building sound characters and becoming real and authentic individuals. Volunteers develop skits based on themes surrounding character education, and interact with students in a healthy and positive way.

Abstinence-based AIDS prevention Seminars: Our volunteers facilitate the instruction for this program based on the highly successful W.A.I.T. (Washington AIDS International Teens) Education, which promotes abstinence before marriage.

Trash Clean-Up Campaigns: Volunteers participate in roadside clean-ups, including ones on Set Setal Day. Set Setal is primarily held on Saturdays and also has become a national monthly event, where neighborhoods participate in the sweeping of streets with “setal,” a bristle-like broom, to promote clean public areas. Volunteers have also assisted in hospital and health clinic cleaning.

Educational Conferences: Our program hosts various conferences concerning governance, global volunteerism, and leadership for adults and youth mostly in the more populated areas in the western region of The Gambia.

Cultural Understanding Activities: Activities surrounding cultural understanding benefits everyone: visitors seeking to learn more about Gambian culture, and Gambian’s seeking to express and better understand their own culture’s customs and traditions. Traditional dances are taught, traditional food is prepared, traditional attire is worn, and old customs are revived by the entire community. Fashion shows hosted by the community have been held with traditional music performed by locals, offering nights of impact and lasting memories..

Interactive Contributions Toward Community Needs: Our program has worked alongside Gambian youth organizations to build structures based on community needs. In 2012, a well in the small community of Sambouya was built to provide a source of water for the village people. Volunteers also farmed land in the rural town of Sukuta, with Service for Peace in The Gambia and Side-by-Side Organization, to be used for crop raising. On a mosque, two minarets were built by participants and paid for by donations made to our program.

Mother & Baby Day: Every year, The Gambia Project’s participants help out at Sukata Health Clinic to provide check-ups for mothers and babies. Blood pressure testing, weight and height checking, and polio vaccinations are provided free of charge. These free health check-ups have considerably reduced the mother/infant mortality rate in the surrounding areas.

Muslims and Christians Dialogue Program: In these seminars led by Islamic and Christian scholars and religious leaders we respectfully discuss values and the application of those values.

Outings and Excursions:

Kunta Kinteh Island: Our program continues to visit Kunta Kinteh Island, a historical site of the West African slave trade. A guided tour of the island is given, with participants exploring the ruins of administrative buildings and the prison quarters. Volunteers have profound realizations on this trip, alongside a deeper understanding of the tragedies that many of our ancestors experienced during this sad time in human history. The Kunteh Kinteh Motto is “Forgive, but Never Again” We are reminded that at this time in history there are over 1,000,000 people still enslaved in Sex Trafficking and Slave Labor around the world.

Parks and Museums: Our program visits Bijilo Forest Park (Monkey Park), Kachikally Pond (Crocodile Park), and the Gambia National Museum in Banjul..

Shopping in Local Markets: Participants have the opportunity to go shopping in local markets, interact with locals, and barter over prices for souvenirs and keepsakes.

Service Awards Celebrations: During our three week stay, our program celebrates service work achievements with the community. Awards are handed out for 50, 100, and 150 hours of volunteer service work done over the preceding year, and fellowship is shared with food, music, dancing, and festivities.