Child Protection

Across The Gambia, thousands of children grow up facing odds that no child should have to navigate alone. Many walk long distances to reach a school that may lack the resources to properly teach them. Others grow up in households where illness goes untreated, where poverty quietly closes doors before they are old enough to know those doors ever existed. For children who are deprived, excluded or living in vulnerable circumstances, the gap between the life they have and the life they deserve can feel impossibly wide.

It is that gap that ChildFund The Gambia has spent four decades working to close  and this week, the organisation made clear it is not slowing down.

In a renewed show of resolve, ChildFund The Gambia has signed Letters of Agreement with its implementing partners, deepening a network of collaboration that spans 32 community associations and stretches across the country. The signing marks a reaffirmation of a promise that deprived, excluded and vulnerable children deserve investment.

Acting Country Director Nfamara Dabo took the opportunity to reflect on what that investment has looked like in practice. More than 15,000 children have been sponsored through ChildFund’s child sponsorship programme since the organisation set foot in The Gambia in 1984. Two thousand bicycles have already been distributed to children in need as part of a plan to give out 10,000 , offering young learners a safer route to school, reducing the child protection risks that come with long journeys on foot.

“We launched an education and child protection project called ‘Dream Reader’, which is operating in all five districts in Foni and targeting primary school children,” Mr Dabo shared. Funded by ChildFund Korea, the project is focused on strengthening reading and writing skills among children in grades 4, 5 and 6.

The organisation’s reach has also extended into health. On two separate occasions, ChildFund has delivered 20-foot containers filled with urgently needed medical supplies and pharmaceutical items to The Gambia’s Ministry of Health, bolstering healthcare delivery across multiple regions.

None of this, Mr Dabo was careful to note, has been achieved alone. He paid tribute to the partners who have walked alongside ChildFund  among them the Department of Social Welfare, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, the Child Protection Alliance, the National Youth Council and UN agencies including UNICEF and WFP.

That spirit of partnership was echoed in the remarks of Rohie Bittaye Darboe, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, who praised collaborations that are community-driven and aligned with government priorities in child protection, education, healthcare and family economic empowerment. “ChildFund has ensured that Gambian children and their families are accorded a gamut of life-changing services in a holistic manner,” she said.

Adama Jimba Jobe, Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, was equally candid about what ChildFund’s support means in real terms. “It is part of our mandate to give quality education to all children in the country,” he said, “and ChildFund has taken 10 percent of that responsibility providing coaching and mentoring of children.”

Eddie Bah, speaking on behalf of the partner federations, expressed gratitude for the engagement.