Torino Smile For Africa (TSFA), a Gambia-Italy charitable organization, recently donated secondhand clothes to children and elders at the Shelter for Children and Home for the Elderly Centre in Bakoteh.
Speaking at the presentation ceremony, Ms Anna Beach, Torino Smile For Africa UK partner who brought the clothes, said the clothes were made available through her family members and well-wishers in Wales.
She started coming to The Gambia fifteen years ago, she said, adding that it was one of her Gambian friends called Mrs Lalla Tambedou Cole who talked to her about the centre two years ago.
“In this my trip I decided to come with something for the needy children of the centre which I know will benefit them much,” Anna said.
She promised she would continue to assist the centre in line with the needs of the centre’s administration.
In receiving the items on behalf of the Department of Social Welfare, Omar Bojang, officer-in-charge of Shelter for Children and Home for the Elderly, thanked TSFA team, especially Anna Beach, for their timely donation to the children of the centre.
Mr Bojang told the donors his centre was established in 2004 with the aims of promoting the welfare of children and their families, promoting the rights of children, protecting those at risk, reuniting children with their families and guardians, providing advice, counseling and care to the vulnerable, and providing 24hrs child hotline which helps the centre to deal with urgent cases over the phone to assist children and their families in immediate danger.
For his part, Ose Ousman Cole, TSFA secretary general, told the centre’s administration that his organization was founded in 2010 by him in The Gambia and Mr Giuseppe Santovito of Torino in Italy with Marco Caranzano of Torino.
“Our objective is to work with communities in different sectors like health, women’s empowerment with small enterprise development projects and presently we have a membership of 61people in The Gambia and 100 international members (Italy and Wales in the UK),” Mr Cole stated.
He revealed that they are presently working with different institutions like Madrasa Sedina Alieu Radia Arabic School in Farato, where his organization is constructing a dining hall and a playground for the students with a separate praying ground for the female students, SOS Children Villages and the Shelter for Children and Home for the Elderly both in Bakoteh and at Sukuta Health centres as well as a borehole for the villagers of Mandina-Ba.
They have also donated a fully equipped ambulance to the EFSTH formerly RVTH.
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