Fabulous donation for burns

We're very grateful to WaterJel for their generous donation of a whole pallet of burn dressings and treatments to go to clinics in The Gambia.

We will carry a small amount of it with us then the rest will go on a container which is being sent by our friends at Project Gambia in Sunderland.

Fundraising ball

On 11th March we had a fundraising ball. It was held at Widnes rugby league stadium and was attended by over 80 people.

Some members of #TeamGambia2017

With some of our friends and supporters

We were delighted to be joined by Jo Austin-Preece,
one of the founders of the Gunjur Project.

The profits were split between our fundraising for the Gunjur Project Association community training centre and Cheshire Scouts international trips. Our share of the profit was £550.

We're very grateful to the team of people who organised this event for their support!

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.