Child Sponsorship

“Growing up, I never imagined that one day I would work for ChildFund – an organization that has supported me since I was 8 years old. Let alone be in charge of the sponsorship department, the same department that played the most critical role in getting me to where I am today,” says Bubaccar Jammeh, a ChildFund former-sponsored child. Today, Bubaccar, popularly known as Buba, is ChildFund The Gambia’s Sponsorship Specialist.

About 35 years ago, Buba’s parents did not have the means to fully provide for all their ten children. His parents were struggling small-scale farmers who mostly grew cassava and groundnuts for their own consumption and sold the surplus in local markets.

“Life was not easy. They could not provide all our basic needs, especially when it came to sending all of us to school and buying all the supplies,” Buba recalls.

So, as was and still is the practice in some African communities, 4-year-old Buba was handed over to his aunt, also a housewife and a small-scale farmer who lived in Tujereng, Kombo South District. His aunt took him in and raised him as his own. That was way back, in 1983. Four years later, in 1988 while in primary school, Bubaccar was enrolled in ChildFund’s sponsorship program.

“You know in our community back then, being a soldier meant that you were the crème de la crème in society. It was very rare to come across an army man. It was almost supernatural. When the men in the village were being counted, the soldiers would definitely be the first because they were considered to be the bravest of the brave. They were highly respected. So you can imagine how excited I was when I learned that my sponsor was in the Navy,” he explains.

“He would send me letters telling me stories about warfare, his experiences, and adventures while at sea, and the countries he visited. He always sent me postcards. It was mind-blowing.” This piqued Buba’s curiosity to learn more about the world and what was happening in other countries.

“When I was 15 years old, I bought a radio with a few savings from my school lunch money I had so that I would always tune in to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to listen to news updates about the Gulf War.” Inspired by his sponsor and the community’s reverence for army men, at an early age, Buba also wanted to be an army man. But as fate would have it, that was never to be as he later ventured into the development world working with ChildFund.

Speaking of the support he received through ChildFund International’s sponsorship program, Buba, who is the first degree-holder in his extended family states, “To date, my sponsor remains one of the key pillars of my life. If it was not for his support, I could not have completed my education. My older siblings were unable to go beyond secondary school because my parents could not afford to pay their school fees.”

Child sponsorship was one of the initiatives by ChildFund when it established a program in the West Coast Region in the 1980s. Buba was enrolled in the program along with hundreds of other children. Buba says ChildFund not only transformed his life and his family, but schools and communities too.

“Through ChildFund’s school feeding program, all children, sponsored or not, would eat healthy meals. Even if your family did not cook, you did not care because you were assured that there was food at school. As kids, we loved it,” he reminisced

In addition to the school feeding program, ChildFund also supported families to venture into vegetable gardening and drilled boreholes providing communities with clean and safe water.

After completing his first diploma, Buba started working with ChildFund through its local partner organization Ding Ding Yiriwa, as a community health worker before joining the partner’s sponsorship unit as a social worker and later as a program assistant. In 2008, he joined ChildFund as a sponsorship officer where he rose to his current position of sponsorship specialist in charge of all the country office’s sponsorship operations.

Now working as a sponsorship specialist, Buba says it gives him great pride to work for the organization that transformed his life.

“I really enjoy what I do. ChildFund has given me a great opportunity to give back not only to deserving children and communities but also to the organization itself. Mine is a very rare and unique story. I am doing to others what was done to me. I am really encouraged and inspired whenever I come across success stories such as mine – of people who were sponsored and are now successful.”

His dreams for the future? “I want to be President and CEO of ChildFund International one day. It only makes sense since ChildFund has always been a part of me and I am part of it. This relationship must have a very happy ending. Don’t I have what it takes?” He laughs. “But I know I have to work extra hard to get there!” Buba concluded.