Gambia school getsa Christmas boost

Project Gambia has secured a range of IT equipment from South Lanarkshire College to support the 300 pupils at St John’s School for the Deaf.

The news came just after charity workers visited Serrekunda in Gambia with a huge consignment of aid.

Paul Lafferty and Frank Devine emerged delighted from a meeting with college depute principal Angus Allan, head of information systems Linda Young and IT support supervisor Chris Sumner.

The partnership means Project Gambia will be in a position to supply the school with IT equipment including 20 notepads, 10 lap tops and a range of assistive software specially adapted for children with hearing impairments and additional disabilities.

This will continue the transformation at the school which has already received 1000 hearing aids from Project Gambia.

Project worker Frank Devine said: “We can’t thank the college enough for this. The first time we went to the school we had only enough bags of rice to feed the children for six-eight weeks. Now we operate a school feeding programme – funded entirely by our supporters in Scotland and elsewhere – every day of the school year.

“We’ve provided every child with two new school uniforms each – made locally, thereby providing much-needed employment for tailors and seamstresses in a country ravaged by poverty and astronomical rate of unemployment. We’ve also organised four shipments of clothing to the school over the past 12 months.

“However, this partnership with a respected educational establishment opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities for the school.”

Colleague Paul Lafferty added: “We thank Angus, Linda and Chris for agreeing to support our charity’s efforts and also lecturer John McAuley who started the ball rolling, making it possible for us to help the school in this way.”