St Peters Nursery School

August 2010 A report from Alan Pickles

 I firstly want to thank Helen Touray, the GETSuk administrator in Gambia, without whose help we would have been unable to operate St Peters Nursery School.

 St Peters Education project started in 2003 when my wife Mary and I went to Gambia for a holiday.  We visited the SOS school and then another small village school in Bundung Borehole, a village within Serekunda. There we saw men teaching a group of 40 children in a small room with no door or window - a roof made up of old rice sacks tied together and fastened to the walls gave the children a little shade from the hot sun.

 We visited the school again the following year to find the situation worse, because there was no shade, as during the rainy seasons the wind had destroyed the roof. The teacher told us that the local women weren't able to repair the roof, and, because the men wanted the children working rather than going to school, they wouldn’t repair the roof, even with palm leaves. We decided to buy hats for all the children and found out the cost of making a tin roof. 

Our friends at home said they would like to help, so a funding group was formed. This was initially to run a project for 3 years to help these children on their educational journey.

 After seven years of renting this property in Serrekunda and having to deal with constant problems with the landlord together with trying to motivate teachers, we have decided that we will not renew the lease on our school buildings after July 2011.  This will allow some of our sponsors to fund other projects around the world. A number of our sponsors have visited Gambia, and they have encouraged most our group to have enough commitment to carry on helping educate Gambian children for the foreseeable future.

 FOOTNOTE

The school has re-opened and is being run by the landlord.