Final briefing

We had our final team briefing on 5th March. We had oodles of resources to share out to carry and then we did lots of practice sessions. We're excited to leave now!

The deliveries are coming!

Now that it is only just over 8 weeks until our trip, we've started ordering all the resources we will need to deliver our peer education sessions. So far we've got:

• 10 small resuscitation dolls
• 4 circuit boards
• Billy bones lifesized skeleton and body parts
• Giant jaw models (for oral hygiene demos)
• Giant demo toothbrushes
• Disclosing tablets
• Mirrors
• Badges
• Neckerchiefs

We have negotiated some additional luggage allowance to check in a couple of extra bags with all our goodies :)

Positive news

We are delighted that on 23^rd January the FCO changed their advice for The Gambia, stating they “no longer advise against travel to The Gambia; the situation has stabilised and the possibility of a military intervention is no longer likely”.

We have spoken to Girlguiding, our insurers, Thomas Cook and the Gunjur Project and we are delighted to announce that our trip is back on! We’ve contacted all our team members and everyone is still committed!

Things are changing in The Gambia

The President of The Gambia Yahya Jammeh has been in power for 22 years, since he took over in a military coup. He was defeated in the elections of December 2016 by Adama Barrow, but has been refusing to relinquish power.  On 19th January Mr Barrow is due to take office, but due to the uncertainty around the situation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has decided to intervene and has sent in military force. The purpose is to forcefully remove Mr Jammeh from office, should he not go of his own accord.

Due to the arrival of the military and the potential for violence, the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office has changed their travel advice to say they 'advise against all non essential travel'.

Unfortunately for us, whilst this FCO advice is in place, we are not able to go to The Gambia. However, we are in close contact with The Gunjur Project, the FCO, our insurance company, Thomas Cook and Girlguiding UK International Commissioner and are monitoring the situation closely.

We are hopeful for a speedy and positive outcome to this situation and our thoughts are with the people of The Gambia.

Third team briefing

Our 3rd team briefing started with some more team building, which is so important when we don't see each other so often.

We used a game which we will play with the Gambian Guides, where there are teams and they have to build a structure which is called out by the facilitator. Here, we have a toilet and a tree!

 

 


We had a hygienist come and talk to us about oral hygiene, so that we could plan a peer education session to deliver to the Guides as well as at the community health day we plan to run in The Gambia.

Second team briefing

For our 2nd team briefing, we made a weekend of it - staying at our county residential centre, Pettypool.

We started with some team building games, where each team had to choose a piece of music then be the band who are performing it.

As well as continuing to build and strengthen our team, the main purpose of the weekend was to make a start on writing the peer education sessions we will deliver when we're in The Gambia.

We spent an afternoon working on simple science experiments, which we can demonstrate to the Gunjur Guides and also Sifoe secondary school who we will spend 1/2 day with.

 

 


We also learnt first aid skills, how to make paracord bracelets and woggles, team games, icebreakers and energisers. One of our favourites was the 'ha-ha' game - we probably can't do this in Gambia as the floor is very dirty, but it made us laugh a lot!

Gunjur Guides out working in their community

The Gunjur Girl Guides who we are supporting and working with have been out doing their first piece of community action. They've been litter picking and cleaning in the area where they live. We're so proud of them!