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This school was identified as being in need of help by
Pageant member, Mo Dawkins.
She had been to see it on a previous trip to The Gambia, while
visiting a family that she has befriended.
Siffoe is a village to
the south of The Gambia near the border with Senegal and is quite a
large community. [MAP] The school had
two reasonably sound classroom blocks and a serviceable kitchen. It
was well fenced and has its own well with a hand-pump in the centre
of the school compound.
This page describes the history of projects
at the school in 2004 and 2005. A lot of progress
was seen in
October 2005,
but the building work was not completed until
June 2008.
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Mo Dawkins in the school grounds |
the water
pump |
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the kitchen |
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some of the Siffoe children |
However, Siffoe School was very short of classrooms for the number of
children it served - a further five classroom block was started a few
years ago, but the source of the money dried up and the building was
not completed. The outer shell of concrete blocks had been erected,
the metal roof trusses and the doors and windows had been bought,
but the roof had not been started, the floors and veranda had not
been laid and the walls were un-plastered.
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the unfinished classroom block |
We asked the headmaster to get estimates for
completion of the building and he did this quickly. The
estimates are widely different: the lower one (~£2,560) is from the
village builder, the higher one (~£5,915) is from a more
'professional-looking' outfit who will no doubt have much higher
overheads and will not use the labour available from teachers and
the village community.
The Pageant Trustees decided that the
rest of the
Three Peaks
Challenge sponsorship money
should be used to start this project. with Pageant providing
sufficient extra funding to complete three of the five classrooms.
Funding for the further two classrooms depended on this work progresses well, the further
two classrooms will be completed as soon as funds allow. The
estimate from the village builder was accepted and the staff,
pupils and villagers of Siffoe helped by contributing their
labour.
Update January 2005
In January 2005, the roof was fitted to the
new classroom block.
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January 2005 - The roof
being fitted |
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Update April 2005
The floors have now been laid. One classroom
is roofed and plastered, but not yet painted and there is no
blackboard. The children don't seem to mind - They seem to enjoy the
novelty of 'camping out' in their new room.
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classroom block,
with one room roofed |
floor being laid |
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children outside the
partly finished classroom |
class in progress |
These classrooms took longer than expected to
complete, but were eventually finished in 2008 (see
details)
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