By Mariam Williams
ChildFund (CF) The Gambia has recently signed a Letter of Agreement (LoA) with its local partners at a ceremony held at the Fund’s office in Kanifing.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr. Nfamara Dabo, Acting Country Director of CF The Gambia, briefed that they were gathered to sign the LoA with their three traditional partners: Foni Ding Ding Federation, Saama Kairo Federation, and Ding Yiriwa Federation.
Dabo said these local partners until 2016, were six in number, but later merged into the current trio community-based organisation that implement the Fund’s sponsorship and other cross-cutting programs across 32 community associations.
“Having been at the heart of our development interventions and their implementation since coming into this country in 1984, I wish to register our profound appreciation to these local partners for their continued partnership with us, in ChildFund’s mission of helping deprived, excluded and vulnerable children to have the capacity to improve their lives and the opportunity to become young adults, parents and leaders who bring lasting and positive change to their communities,” he told the gathering.
The Acting Country head further said it’s important that they recognize other stakeholders with whom they have collaborated in the past years (fiscal year 2020), worth mentioning are the Department of Social Welfare (DoSW), Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE), Child Protection Alliance (CPA), National Youth Council (NYC), UN Agencies, especially UNICEF and WFP, and the media.
“We have supplied 2000 bikes to the needy and deserving children to enable them get to and from school on time and, more crucially, minimise the child protection risks they face to and from school.These developments are indicative of the high premium we attach to the education sector,” said Dabo.
In the area of health, he said they have also in the past years boosted the country’s Ministry of Health with 20-foot containers on two separate occasions loaded with highly sought after medical supplies and pharmaceuticals; that these items that are brought in the country through the guidance and approval of the Health Ministry, have enhanced healthcare delivery for people across the different regions.
The CF Gambia head intimated that, being a child protection agency, CF in partnership with their local partners, committed valuable time, energy and resources to awareness raising efforts designed to tighten the noose on child marriage and other harmful practices that militate against the development and well-being of children.
He further stated that one major child protection measures they did in the past years was the community-based child protection mechanisms mapping, specifically in Jambanjelly, with the intention of allowing the residents to understand the prevailing child protection risks and concerns facing children as understood.
Dabo recollected that they had also handed over 500 handwashing stations coupled with sanitisers of different sorts to communities in their local partners organisations to 2000 families in the West Coast Region as part of their fight against Covid-19 pandemic.
The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry responsible for Women, Children and Social Welfare, Mrs. Rohie Bittaye-Darboe, speaking at the ceremony, described it as “indeed laudable”, saying as a Ministry they encourage partnerships that are not only community-driven but also complement the focused areas of the government, particularly as they relate to child protection, education, healthcare, family economic empowerment and entrepreneurship, among other things.
“As the saying goes, government alone cannot do it all. Therefore, the support and collaboration of civil society, parents, teachers, religious leaders, NGOs and community-based organisations remain crucial to attainment of our vision as a Ministry and a country as a whole,” PS Bittaye emphasised.
Seeing it as a clear demonstration of trust, she encourages them to work harder to ensure that the outcome they jointly seek for children are achieved by the end of the fiscal year 2020; challenging that, this is an investment for children and it must yield tangible results.
Other speakers included Deputy Permanent Secretary of MoBSE, Mr. Adama Jimba Jobe and Edi Bah, Federation Manager of Foni Ding Ding Federation.
