Young women in 80 rural villages empowered

The association in recent times has brought together almost 105 young drop-outs and vulnerable women (85% under 30 years old) from 80 rural villages mostly in West Coast Region, Central River Region and North Bank Region.

Since its inception in 2010, the association has strongly advocated for alleviating poverty, whilst protecting the environment and promoting gender equality. It has initiated many projects one of which is its flagship Fandema Women Development Centre at Tujereng village

The project addresses one of the priorities of The Gambia which is enhancing Women’s livelihoods by strengthening their professional activities with renewable energy.

Speaking at the two day forum, Malang Sambou, chairman and founder of the association, explained that the forum is organised to have a stakeholders’ meeting in which all the people benefiting from their project notably those from WCR, CRR and NBR can discuss the projects that are already implemented and share the lessons learned and also look forward to the upcoming projects.

According to Mr. Sambou, the communities select some of the beneficiaries who are young females and trained as solar installers in order to combat climate change and to mechanise the workload of women which led them to develop and implement a solar multi functional platform in Mahmouda, Sinchu Alagie and other villages.

He further said that these projects are mainly focused to make sure that the household load on women is mechanised by putting washing machines, milling machines, borehole for the gardens and putting solar dryer to dry all the wastes from the garden in order to have them transformed.

“The most interesting thing is that there are also electrical tricycles which are able to cover more than 65 kilometers for only two hours of charge which helps them transport their materials to the ‘lumo’ sites; and also there are ice making machines,” he revealed.