Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve passed peacefully at our accommodation. However, celebrations in the nearby Senegambia region can be quite wild and we were even warned a little bit not to go to the area.

We had a joyful task to start the new year. We had the pleasure of delivering two footballs that were sent by Rotarian Martin Heinrich. The balls were received by the FSNG School's student council president.

Football is a very important sport in Gambia and there is a shortage of balls. One of the balls will be used by the school and the other will go to the neighborhood children.

It is important for young people to understand how democracy works

Today, we had the opportunity to be present when representatives of the Future Starts Now Gambia school, which is looking for new premises, visited the rental market in a neighborhood that is home to several youth organizations.

One of them is National Youth Parliament - The Gambia. Local leaders tell us that since its inception in 2002, the National Youth Parliament has involved youth from across the country to build their capacity in the three arms of the state and parliamentary democracy procedures with the aim to prepare and enhance their knowledge on leadership, governance, administration, policy advocacy, debate etc. More than 50 percent of the global population are young people under 30, but according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, they constitute less than 2 percent of the world’s National Assembly Members.

Examining the Gambian Education Landscape

Today, we had the pleasure of having a good and thorough discussion about the current state of the education sector in The Gambia. Mr Musa O. Mendy, who has had a long career in Gambian education administration, and Lamin Keita, the principal of FSNG School, were present as guests of the GGG project representatives.

Mr Mendy is the director of EMMA School. He is very satisfied with the level of the computers that have already been delivered. The devices are expensive and a tempting target for theft in a poor country, so security aspects must be taken into account.

Future Starts Now Gambia School, on the other hand, is considering the challenges facing the school's new location and the rise in prices. The challenging global situation is also reflected in The Gambia.

Photo: From left Mr Jukka Ylipiha, Mr Lamin Keita, Mr Musa O. Mendy and Mr Janne Lepola

There are also positive signs for the future. FSNG School is involved in a project funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Finnpartnership), which makes it possible to start occupational safety training in The Gambia. This would be a new step for the school and is possible now that the level of teacher competence has been able to be developed thanks to the Global Grant Gambia project.

Time to put the finishing touches on the project

 The final phase of the project has started. We are leaving Helsinki-Vantaa Airport for Gambia on Christmas Day. This time, we have Annette Johansson as a guest of the project group, so the size of the delegation is again four people.

During the year, a comprehensive material for basic IT studies has been compiled on a common learning platform. All materials will be available to teachers after the project has ended.

Obtaining funding for purchases in Gambia has been surprisingly challenging. However, once we arrived, we received confirmation that the money had arrived safely. In addition to the training program, we intend to collect feedback from the target group of the project during our visit. The information will be important for future projects too.

Photo: Annu Jokela-Ylipiha (teacher, pedagogical themes), Jukka Ylipiha (teacher, IT), Janne Lepola (project manager) and Annette Johansson as a guest.

Education system and funding in Gambia

Education in the Gambia takes place in 5 stages: lower basic, upper basic and secondary school, followed by undergraduate and graduate university. The 6 years of lower basic education at least is compulsory and free. Still not every child has an opportunity to get education. There is a selection examination at the end of this period which is the hurdle to continuing further. Lower basic education continues for another 3 years leading to a junior school certificate. 

Those students whose parents can afford the cost of ongoing education continue with 3 years at senior secondary school. Their core curriculum includes English language, mathematics, integrated science and social studies. They also take 3 – 4 elective subjects too, which may center on commerce, science or the arts. Finally, they sit for their west african senior secondary certificate examination. Source: scholaro.com

Fees for Senior Secondary students are about D4,550 a year in a state school and the fees for a student at a private Senior Secondary school vary from D4,800 to D16,000 a year. Some funding tools are provided to Senior Secondary students like scholarships, aids and grants, sponsorships, education loans and some students take part-time jobs to be able to finance their studies. 

Basic funding for schools in GGG project come from different sources: sponsors, state or a business run by apprentice students. Lack of resource is still an ongoing issue so one aim of the Master Trainer -program is to learn fund racing tools and methods in social media. With GGG funds we are producing a manual for that to support individual fund racing in each school.

Merry Christmas from Gambia!

What do Finnish volunteers do in Gambia at Christmas? Naturally, they cook rice porridge and raisin soup, heat mulled wine and eat cookies. Luckily online TV shows when Turku, Finland declares Christmas peace. During the national anthem, we solemnly stand and raise a toast in honor of Christmas.

Merry Christmas from Gambia!

First certificates out

All too soon we are in the last night. The discussion is lively. We think about the suitability of different methods to the conditions in The Gambia. The topic of the last night is assessment. How the assessment of learning and the assessment of competencies differ from each other?

Catering group gives us an excellent example. Earlier we were asked to give them some kind of written acknowledgment too. So we train to identify the competences related to their activities.

At the end of the training, we arrange ourselves in a corridor with a smiley face at one end and a sad face at the other end. Some of the participants feel sad because the training is ending. -This group feels like a family, someone commented. Others are near to the smiley face. They feel that they got much more than what was expected.

Teacher students get their first Certificates of Appreciation (Pedagogical tools). Now they will take a well-deserved Christmas break.

Also teacher of teachers feels happy and thankful. It's hard to imagine a more interesting case than being able to develop teaching together with representatives of a completely foreign culture. We continue working with ICT and social media materials for fundraising. We still have the opportunity for one more period of face-to-face teaching, but we are sure that communicating remotely before that will be much more easy.

Finally, how does an excellent Gambian teacher look like today? He/she is confident, focused, flexible, determinent to teach, goal-oriented, teacher by heart, clear with explanations, gives good introductions, ensures understanding AND he or she is a good motivator, uses different methods and is professional in assessment.

Methods and more methods

Due to the school holiday season, there is a limited amount of time for face-to-face teaching. That's why we choose a very practical toolkit as our approach. The set of sixteen tools offers more options for traditional lecturing and for different stages of learning. The teachers also receive the toolbox as a separate manual.

Some of the tools we propose have already been used. For example, debating events and panel discussions are organized in schools. Many of the tools that support community learning are, on the other hand, new to the teachers. The soccer World Cup has just ended, so analyzing the success factors of soccer as a mind map is interesting to everyone.

Since the teaching takes place after a long day of work, we want to offer dinner. A group of four, some of the students of Future Starts Now Gambia, prepare and serve us tasty local dishes. Eating together is also a great way to get to know each other, build trust and a sense of togetherness.

Boosting motivation

Today we explore different learning environments and dive deeper into different motivational factors and student motivation. In addition to this, brainstorming and mind map techniques are practiced.

In general, admission to school is like winning the lottery for many. A large part of the students are still school dropouts, so dealing with motivational factors is necessary. Students who are more motivated to learn persist longer, produce higher quality effort, learn more deeply and perform better in classes and on standardized tests. 

In Finland, students who drop out of school often have for example mental health reasons. In The Gambia, the focus seems to be more on financial or physical constraints. Even if the education itself would be free, it can cause  for example travel expenses. This can reduce the motivation of a poor family to support a young person's schooling. 

A surprising number of young people have e.g. bad sight. Families can't afford an optician and glasses. Teachers have to take this into account in teaching. Basic skills can also be weak. The official language of The Gambia and the language of education is English. However, English is a foreign language for most children, so understanding the teaching is difficult.

But at least one problem is common in both Finland and The Gambia: students play at night and then keep napping during the school day.

As important as good motivation is to students, it is to teachers. One aim in teacher training is to empower Gambian teachers. Especially in VET (vocational education and training) there is no training of trainers at all. Below a teacher student writes in his learning journal things that keep him going as a teacher:

Classroom teaching begins

An exciting day today, classroom teaching begins. We meet after the teachers' working day at Future Starts Now Gambia -school. There are a total of seven teacher students from all three schools of the project. We start by defining the most central concepts and go through the basic theories of pedagogy.

As on exercise teacher students discuss their own experiences of good teachers in pairs. The end result of the exercise is the definition of a good Gambian teacher: confident, focused, flexible, determinent to teach, goal-oriented, teacher by heart, clear with explanations, gives good introductions, ensures understanding. This is a very good definition. We are excited to see if this definition takes on new dimensions during this week.

Preparations for the course

Our flight arrives to Istanbul after midnight. We transfer to flight to Banjul and arrive on Sunday morning. We stay in Kunta Kinteh resort and meet also Martin Heinrichs from rotary club Espoo Meri. Martin is here to get familiar with project operations and gambian environment. 

Master Trainig program includes three modules. This time we'll concentrate on module 2. Module is compulsory to all students and we'll give a certificate of appreciation for pedagogical tools.

Module 1 (orientation, online)

• individual study plan
• role as a teacher
• learning styles 
• teaching styles

Module 2 (pedagogical tools)

• learning concepts
• learning environments
• motivation
• orientation
• teaching new subject areas
• boosting learning insights
• applying new skills for working life
• reinforcing learning
• assessment of learning
• assessment of competencies

Module 3 (ICT)

• @-card or A-card
• Extra themes in Google Classroom
• Fundrasing in social media - manual

Back to Gambia

We are heading back to Gambia, project manager Janne Lepola, ICT-teacher Jukka Ylipiha and Master trainer -program trainer Annu Jokela-Ylipiha. To be honest, things didn't go as we expected during the fall. That was not a surprise really. Working only through remote connections is challenging. The electricity problems and unstable internet connections caused most of the trouble. Along with the technical problems, the motivation also waned.

We decided to change tactics. In The Gambia, sociality and community are important values, so we decided to invest in face-to-face teaching. The rest of the pedagogical part will be implemented as an effective four-day course. The course is supposed to take place in Future Starts Now Gambia -school in Serekunda. We look forward to seeing how these new old ways will help us to get ahead!

Moving on online

We are back in north but moving on. It took a while to get laptops for each teacher but at the end of May everything was ready and all laptops delivered. As agreed, we'll meet online every other Wednesday. Sometimes connection is unstable but using Google Classroom, Whats App and Google Meets we can still create a proper program for teachers.

So far we have discovered different learning styles and teaching styles as well as defined what kind of IT skills will be needed in our partner schools. At the moment we are learning to create quizzes that support learning.

Local rotary partners are waiting for proposals for computers and solar panels for EMMA school. Hopefully we'll get soon photos of children with new computers!