Great Gambian adventure: Youth participation and engagement

One of the current VSO projects here in The Gambia has been designed to encourage youth participation and engagement. Three volunteers, in three different areas (two very rural) have been working with youths, council officers and local stakeholders to make sure that young people are able to form organised youth groups and access services and schemes that could help them fulfil their economic and social potential. As part of this, all three volunteers have run youth camps in the last month, arranging training for local young people on subjects such as proposal writing, business development, and resource mobilisation. As part of our monitoring trek we called in to a youth camp in Kerewan, and visited a couple of youth groups in Kuntaur.

The youth camp for Kerewan was held at Njawara Agricultural Training Centre, which you may recognise from some of the Training of Trainers work that we have done as part of the groundnut project. Maja, the VSO volunteer, and her colleagues had organised a youth camp for around 45 young people, with a full day time agenda of useful lessons, and a fun social evening agenda with drama, cultural dance, sports activities and quizzes. Abdoulie and I were there for the closing ceremony, during which time we heard the final speeches and watched a play staged by the young people to represent what they had learned during the camp.

The obligatory group photo!

Rehearsing for the closing ceremony play

The top table

Closing ceremony audience

While in Kuntaur we had a different experience. We travelled to a village to meet some of the young people who had already attended the Kuntaur based youth camp, and were putting into practice some of the things they had learned. The youth group was very well organised, and members were working to develop a whole range of skills and services that will help them to earn money and become economically stable. Brick making, carpentry, tie dye, and farming were just some of their activities. They have even set up their own savings scheme and give loans and credit facilities to their youth group members to develop business ideas. It was really interesting to hear them talk.

One business idea that they were working on was making beauty and health products out of natural resources. They showed us the moringa seeds and beeswax they collect to process into soaps, and the natural insect repellent that they make using boiled neem tree leaves mixed with melted down bath soap.

Moringa seeds, used in soap for skin benefits

Insect repellent

Beeswax in a raw form. This will be boiled to process it.

Group shot with some of their tie dye
and certificates from the youth camp.

Next we travelled to another village to meet a youth group who told a similar story of ow they have put their new business skills into use, helping them to develop their entrepreneurial activities. This group were doing tie dye and soap making amongst other things, and even had their own bakery run by the youth association members. The great thing about this group was the amount of young women involved. The volunteer, Deborah, reported in her final placement evaluation that the most meaningful change was that now, after some focused sensitisation on the importance of including women, communities were sending young people - especially young women - to the youth activities (instead of sending old men which they were doing at first) and the women had become noticeably more confident - actively engaging in events. We could certainly see the evidence of that here.