new south project since January 2021
Scholarship Program
Introductory information
As you may know, Gambia has no compulsory education. But often children cannot go to school or children leave school early to help their parents with the housework, to care for the smaller children within the family, to help in the vegetable garden, etc.
The main reason why children drop out of school is the school costs. These are too high for the parents/guardians to wear. Education is supposedly "free" in Gambia, but the school fee, sometimes exam fee, uniforms, school badges, sometimes mandatory uniform school backpack, writing materials and school books are at the expense of the parents. These costs are insufficient for poor families, forcing them to make the choice to let their child work instead of going to school...
Our vision
Education is an international right of the child, and therefore 'belongs'quality education for every child' then also until one of the 17th United Nations Sustainable Goals (SDG 4, UN).
We also believe that education is extremely important for the future of the child, the future of the family and the future of a country that children can enjoy a quality education (and, if they wish, also a higher education). That is why we are committed to this objective through the scholarship program and the distribution of school materials.
You can sponsor a Gambian child through our scholarship program!
How do we proceed?
You send us an e-mail asking to sponsor a boy or girl in Gambia.
We have an emergency database with children 3 different schools, in which we introduce a child to you. If you agree, we can start this for you.
A scholarship costs €100 per school year (plus €10 fixed costs for processing costs and transaction costs of the amount). You can also sponsor lunch money for €50 per school year without obligation and/or purchase a bicycle for your sponsored child without obligation. We can request this last price from our local team at that time, and it depends on the age of the child.
You can start with a scholarship until the end of December of the same school year. Then you have to wait until the next school year.
We will start as soon as we receive your scholarship in our project account. We work with a local team that takes care of everything from paperwork and transaction. We need a few weeks to get around completely.
Our local team regularly visits the schools to inquire how the children are doing. They also provide images for the sponsoring parents. We try to provide you with at least 1 photo and a (test or final) result during the course of the school year. General photos of children and schools within our scholarship program are also regularly posted on our social media (with permission).
Ethics
We ask you to always consider carefully when starting up a study grant. This way we don't have to disappoint a child with the message that sponsorship will stop.
We obviously do not oblige you to anything, but we do hope that you can continue to sponsor the child until he/she graduates from the current degree or school.
Sometimes it happens that a child moves to such an extent that we have to stop the scholarship or transfer it to another child. We will inform you if you move and we will of course first ask your permission before transferring the scholarship to another child.
Local visit
If desired, we can ask permission from the child's parents/guardian to visit "your sponsored child" in Gambia. Below you will find some videos from recent years.
Some figures
Since the start of our scholarship program, we have already provided a total of 42 scholarships. Thanks to this bstudents graduated as follows:
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One student at Gambia University
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Eight students at the preschool degree from Roots Nursery Preschool in Sambuyang
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One student at Walid Khalid Bun Arabic School in Gunjur
The figures for the 2023-2024 school year are not yet included in this text (figures updated until 10.11.2023).
