By Yero S. Bah
Fostering education and nurturing harmony in the communities of Wellingara and Abuko were the inspiring words from the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Inspiring Young-Stars Charity The Gambia, Alagie Ndow as he spoke about his nonprofit organization that was created “to seek, create and inspire literacy development through library”, by supporting programmes that positively impact the lives of young-people. CEO Ndow believes that all “youngsters are stars” as he envisioned a nation in which all children and young people can pursue quality education to reach their full potentials so as to contribute to the advancement of their communities.
“We believe that education should be life’s first opportunity for all children regardless of their backgrounds, and that all can pursue a quality education to reach their full potentials,” so stated the charity’s founder in an interview with Mansa Banko Online on Wednesday, 3 June 2020 at his Wellingara community library office.
Mr. Ndow highlighted the numerous achievements and activities they had been able to register since the organization’s inception few years ago. He acknowledged that since 2016, it has been an inspiring and amazing journey for him as a young social entrepreneur with great passion of inspiring young people.
Despite all the challenges, he reported that the charity organisation had been able to make significant impact on a short period of time, citing the establishment of “Inspiring Young-Stars Library” in the communities of Wellingara and Abuko, to avail young people opportunities to develop their literacy skills and educational potentials.
The founder and CEO informed that the Library runs 24 hours “providing exciting services to the community and students as youths are involved in diverse educational and community developmental programmes.” He explained that from February 2016 to December of the same year, over 438 people have been impacted by the services provided by their library.
Ndow added that they run various community initiatives such as the Inspiring Girl-stars (IG-stars) which empowered over 40 girls on public speaking, poetry and literacy skills but as well as inspiring girls to be outspoken, have self-confidence in order to become decision-makers and change agents.
He recalled that in May 2017, the organization had embarked on a project in which it conducted a two-day healthcare event that brought together eye-specialists from major hospitals to provide health care services to community members, thus impacting over 280 people with visual difficulties.That in December 2017, through partnership with Daughters of Africa Foundation and the Vessel UK 10, their youth members participated on a Youth Empower-Us project which brought together over 50 youths from diverse communities across the Gambia for a 10-day capacity building on community sensitization, leadership, sexual health and gender and equality.
He indicated that their most recent project came at the end of the 2018, bringing an innovative educational learning library project in the community to support the poor and underprivileged children in their communities.”
According to the founder and CEO of the organization, a total of 85 people were provided with eyes glasses whilst 320 people attended the eye-checking clinic.
The library has medical, literature, English grammar, children’s books and others, and Ndow said books are powerful and key to success. But he’s not oblivious of the poor reading culture in the country, as he pointedly laments that Gambians don’t care about books.
Mr. Musa Saidykhan, a fifth year medical student of the University of The Gambia (UTG) is the Administrative Secretary responsible for the medical aspects of the organization.
He told this online medium that their organization was able to get medical books – through partnerships – from some universities in United Kingdom and friends from other organizations such as Daughters of Africa Foundation and the Vessel UK.
