Since the previous newsletter 33 of September 8, major steps forward have been made. Especially the students of ROC Tilburg and Ida Ndow, the head of the Bymyra Bilingual School, have been busy!
ROC Tilburg
The 12 students have jointly purchased 5 cars, with which they will leave for Africa on 29 January 2023 under the guidance of Go for Africa (GfA). Behind this link you will find the five student teams, which we will welcome in The Gambia together with Bymyra Bilingual School around February 19, 2023. The students of ROC Tilburg: Teun van Hees and Boris Kruidijk (Team 11), Hein Patist, Joost Reijrink and Siebe Verschueren (Team 13), Joop van de Schoot and Sjoerd Maes (Team 14), Kurt van Baer and Sander Brugging (Team 15), Jasper Thijsen, Loek Goossen and Fleur Doorakkers (Team 18), together with their parents and ROC Tilburg staff: Teun Mallens, Karel Hoving and Cees van Gerwen, have emerged as true heroes of Central Brabant. They received help from no less than 80 sponsoring entrepreneurs and organizations. These are listed at the end of this article.
Why heroes? They have:
- Made a prefab roof for the 1st classroom of the new school in Gambia: Vocational Education Bymyra, (VEB)
- Purchased 2nd hand solar panels for this roof and prepared them for transport to The Gambia.
- Gathered tools and materials to install the electrical installation in VEB and to set it up as a practice room;
- Helped with loading the container for Gambia on 22 November. See attached film impression;
- Had to sacrifice another free Saturday on 10 December to fully load and unload the 40 ft container because the load was not correctly distributed over the bottom of the container. We now hope that the container will reach Gambia in time, so that the students there can get to work with the contents. You can fill in our container with number TRLU7071153 on this website.
Bymyra VEB
Then our heroes in The Gambia: Ida Ndow and her husband Modou Ceesay. With donations from the Netherlands, they were able to acquire a large piece of land in Tujereng of 1.2 hectares last summer. They framed this with a solid wall last summer, so that we can develop the intended vocational education in a safe environment.
This video is about the progressive construction of the site demarcation. Ida then has preparations made on the VEB site to build the VEB classroom. The accompanying drawings show what the building will look like inside and out:
The foundation of the building has been laid and it is expected that the walls will be erected before the arrival of the ROC students. Teun and Bertie visited the location at the end of November 2022 to view the progress on the Gambian side. This video by Teun shows that considerable progress has been made in the preparations and construction of VEB under the direction of Ida and Modou. We are extremely proud and impressed by the scale and progress with which they are tackling this.
Action 1 Transport: Buy a seat in our minibus
Why?
All our projects depend on transport and transport is expensive in The Gambia
- The place of vocational education (VEB) is about 15 km from the school. Transport is necessary and decisive for the success of the vocational education project.
- Students who do not want to go to the Bymyra school now can be picked up
- A happy driver gets a job and a salary
So invest in our minibus that we want to buy in the Netherlands and send to Gambia with the container. Do something crazy in 2023!
Buy a (part of a) seat for 100 euros or a multiple thereof!
NL58TRIO0198566433 of Triodosbank in the name of Cameroon Works! Stating: Seat Minibus Gambia
Continued VEB
We naturally hope that all ROC students will arrive in The Gambia in good health and be able to realize their intended work there. At the end of their stay, the students – thanks to Bertie’s successful mediation – will hand over 3 of the 5 cars they brought with them to Bymyra. The other 2 cars also remain in The Gambia but are transferred by GfA to other charities.
However, there is still a white spot in the whole. The VEB location is far from the road and the public power grid. That is why we want to realize a solar power system for VEB, with which we can permanently meet the electricity needs at the location for lighting, computers and the machines in the practical room. The solar panels are mounted on the roof, but an inverter, a battery system and a battery management system are still missing, which ensures that the excess solar power is stored in a battery and makes it available when the sun does not shine as needed. This so-called standalone energy supply is unique and of particular importance to the VEB as a demo for other locations in Africa and for a stable electricity supply, which the public grid cannot always provide in Gambia. During my farewell at Midpoint Brabant on December 7, colleagues and relations raised just under € 2,000 for this project. I am of course very grateful to my generous (former) colleagues and relations! We hope this is an important start. Additional donations are of course very welcome!
Would you like to know more about this project?
Please contact: Herman Gels, telephone 0651395368
Action 2 Electricity
Donate for a stable sustainable and clean electricity supply for vocational education in The Gambia. NL58TRIO0198566433 v d Triodosbank in the name of. Cameroon Works! stating Solar Energy Gambia
Finally, three solar heaters are on their way to The Gambia. These come from China with the code: TGHU6833228 and can also be followed along the way via the same website. We hope that the ROC students still have time to install it in Tungbung Village and at the Bymyra School.