APR season begins

Tuesday saw the start of the 2013/14 annual partnership reviews, and our first partnership to review was the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education. This is Nicola’s placement, and the project that they are working on is placing national volunteers in secondary schools across two of the furthest regions in The Gambia. Furthest from the Kombos that is, which – due to rural to urban migration and the lure of the ‘big city’ – makes the teaching vacancies harder to fill.

I ran the session with Ebou, and it was well attended by national volunteers and a senior teacher as well as Nicola’ direct counterparts and MoBSE colleagues. The project is doing really well, and this year they recruited 44 national volunteers, a considerable difference from the 4 they had in 2010. The scheme is generating a lot of recognition, with teachers requesting national volunteers, and asking if the programme can be extended to cover upper basic schools and the other 4 regional education directorates, which was nice to hear. It was interesting doing the review for the second year in a row as I was able to see what progress they had made since last year, and how well the partnership between VSO and MoBSE was working.