Return to Current Media Releases
Garfield
to Gambia: Becoming connected (3/7/02)
Local High
School Students, Non Profits, Team up to Bring Technology to Rural West
African Schools (2/8/02)
Young Americans Tackle Philanthropy, Technology on International
Project (2002)
Dick's Drive-Ins 3rd Annual Good Deed Awards
(10/01)
KUOW Radio Appearance (3/01)
25,000 Books from Seattle Donors en Route to Gambian
Schools (2/22/01)
March 7, 2002
Garfield
to Gambia: Becoming connected
Gambia experience enriches Garfield students
by Jerry Large, Staff Columnist Seattle Times
They say Africa is not a linear place. Paths never take a straight line when they can meander the way life does, and that is the way several Seattle groups came together to provide computers to two high schools in Gambia: Their wandering paths crossed.
The main groups –
Garfield High School, Rotary District 5030 (Greater Seattle) and GambiaHELP
– supported the project, in which eight Garfield students spent the
past two weeks setting up computer labs and training students at Nasir
Ahmadiyya Senior Secondary School in Bassee, and Armitage Senior Secondary
School in Janjangbureh.
Dave Gertler, a senior and the group’s technology leader, said they got 85-95 percent of the job done despite the fact that the airline lost 16 pieces of luggage and he had to wear the same underwear for a week and a half. Um, maybe you don’t want to know that much about the trip.
If you know anything at all about Gambia, it’s probably that one of its villages, Juffure, was the place to which “Roots” author Alex Haley traced his ancestor Kunta Kinte.
If Kunta Kinte were a teenager today, he’d be playing Snoop Dogg CDs real loud. While the Seattle students found a lot of stuff that surprised them because it was different, they also found surprising similarities between their home and this distant place.
Sophomore Kathleen Compton was amazed at how red the dirt was and surprised that trash wasn’t carted away in trucks, but was swept into piles by women who burned it each morning.
Jennifer LaCoste, another sophomore, was surprised at the popularity of Bob Marley, Tupac and Destiny’s Child. Someone started humming “Survivor” and she thought, “Wow, I know that. They were doing our hair (braids), and we were all singing.”
Then they did some culture exchanging. “I sang a song in Chinese, Laura (Kanter) sang in Hebrew. We taught them to sing Happy Birthday in Spanish.”
Like
many countries in Africa, Gambia is young, only having become an independent
nation in 1965. There are about 1.4 million Gambians living in a country
that is basically a 200-mile-long sliver of land on either side of the
Gambia River, a finger poked by the British into the midsection of the
French colony that became Senegal.
It is a mostly agricultural country with a high unemployment rate and no meaningful national resources to draw upon. Peanuts and peanut products make up 75 percent of this country’s exports.
But the Garfield students saw more than a tiny, poor country. Everywhere, people wanted to feed them and befriend them.
Kanter said, “I learned it was a lot more rich culturally than I thought.”
Gertler said, “Even though you can’t go to the supermarket, you have what you need to live. They live much more simply.”
The students marveled at the closeness of Gambian families. Compton tried to tell a new friend about her home. “She said, ‘But where do your uncles live? Where do your cousins live?’ Well, in California, Ohio…” The separation didn’t make sense to her Gambian friend.
The students not only gave, they came back with some benefits, new friends, a better understanding of the world and broadened cultural horizons.
Katy Barnhart said, “Everyone in this group has a lot more self-confidence now. We went to Africa, and we did what we said we would do.”
They had good role models in three adults: Shelby Tarutis, who founded GambiaHELP (Health Education Liaison Project); Bob Wilson, governor of Rotary’s District 5030, which raised money for the project; and Kjell Rye, the Garfield technology teacher who started these computer trips with donations to a Mexican orphanage in 1998.
Tarutis felt some of the students’ excitement herself as a Peace Corps volunteer in Gambia in 1980 and 1981.
She bonded with a local family, and when she came back to Seattle to get her masters in public health from the University of Washington, she kept thinking about the people she’d left.
Tarutis decided to combine her profession and her love of Gambia. She looked for needs not being serviced by other aid organizations and created an organization to meet those needs.
What these three adults have in common is that, like Gambians, they have a definition of family that reaches far and wide.
February
8, 2002
Local High School Students, Non
Profits, Team up to Bring Technology to Rural West African Schools
SEATTLE – In Garfield High School’s Engineering and Technology Lab, a group of eight students meet on their lunch hour to go over packing lists, purchase final equipment over the web, and double-check their video equipment. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the principal and staff of Nasir Ahmadiyya Senior Secondary School, the only high school in this poorest and most remote region of The Gambia, are holding a meeting of their own. They discuss power fluctuations, room layout, and the acquisition of enough tables and chairs for the 25 computers that will be arriving in a few weeks’ time. Both groups are part of a project to build web-ready computer labs in two rural Gambian high schools – a project which will culminate this month in this tiny West African country after a year of hard work and preparation.
“I’m so excited,” said Laura Kanter, a sophomore at Garfield High, and the student Project Lead. “I can’t wait to go to Africa, meet new people, and provide them with a wonderful resource for information and communication.”
The project was initiated
last year by the Seattle-based non-profit GambiaHELP, whose focus is on
the amelioration of educational, health, and economic conditions in The
Gambia. “This is a country where there is currently one book for
every fifteen students.” said Shelby Tarutis, the organization’s
executive director. “We knew that bringing technology to these schools
would not only offer students an opportunity to learn valuable hardware
and software skills, but it would also provide them with access to information
and educational materials via the web that are otherwise completely out
of their reach.”
GambiaHELP teamed up with Garfield High School and the non profit organization, Computers for the World (C4W), who have completed similar projects in countries such as Guatemala, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. “C4W provides students with opportunities for leadership, it identifies safe locations around the world for computers, and it assists with funding through Rotary grants.” said Robin Dubrin, C4W President and member of the Emerald City Rotary Club.
The students at Garfield spent months repairing the more than 70 computers and monitors donated by Premera Blue Cross, which were finally packed and shipped off to The Gambia in early December. C4W has provided students with mentoring on project management and team-building, and GambiaHELP has focused on laying the groundwork for the project in-country, as well as ensuring that the labs will be sustainable, and teaching the American students about Gambian customs and culture. “It’s a good match,” said Tarutis, of the organizations involved. “Garfield High and C4W bring the technical expertise, and we provide the network of contacts and in-country knowledge specific to The Gambia.”
The two recipient schools in The Gambia were selected based upon their large student populations, rural locations, and reputations as good learning centers. “Our dream is to have state of the art computers all over our lab and school.” said Mr. Mamadi Ceesay, the Principal at Nasir Ahmadiyya. “The intervention of GambiaHELP, Garfield High, and C4W will make this a reality.”
During their stay, the Americans will not only build the labs, but will also teach the students and staff how to maintain the computers. “Teaching the students the technology allows them to be independent and to keep the labs running even after we’ve gone.” said sophomore team member Katy Barnhart.
For the students at Garfield, the project has already served part of its purpose: helping them develop skills that will be useful long after the project is over. As Laura Kanter puts it: “In addition to all of the technical skills I’ve learned, I now know that being a leader is a lot harder than it looks. There is so much going on, all at once, and in a thousand different directions. But, it gives me more confidence in myself, knowing that I can do it.”
January-February
2002
Young
Americans Tackle Philanthropy, Technology on International Project
by Laura Fine-Morrison, for Global TeachNET
After 11 months of hard work, eight students from Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, are about to embark on the educational experience of a lifetime. They received their immunizations, picked up their passports and visas, and raised nearly $20,000. They obtained 60 computers, which they repaired and installed with donated software, and loaded onto a shipping container bound for West Africa.
Now – on February 18th – these students will meet up with the computers in Banjul, The Gambia, and take them up-country to two senior secondary schools. There, with the help of their Gambian counterparts, they will build two web-ready computer labs.
“I’m so excited,” said Laura Kanter, a sophomore at Garfield, and the student Project Lead. “I can’t wait to go to Africa, meet new people, and provide them with a wonderful resource for information and communication.”
The Americans will work, eat, and where possible lodge, with the Gambian students during their two-week visit, and will teach them everything they know about computer installation, usage, and maintenance. At the end of the project, the Gambians will be left with the computers, tools and spare parts, and the necessary knowledge to keep the labs up and running. Ideally, both sides will also walk away with a better understanding of a culture different from their own, yet also an awareness of the similarities that transcend linguistic, religious, or national boundaries.
The project is the brainchild of two groups with complimentary interests: the technology students and instructor at Garfield High, and GambiaHELP, a non-profit organization focusing on health and education in The Gambia.
“We were looking for a way to bring technology to rural Gambia,” said Shelby Tarutis, Director of GambiaHELP and a former Gambian Peace Corps Volunteer (’80-’81). “Garfield High has done this type of project in other countries. So they bring the technical expertise, and we provide the network of contacts and in-country knowledge specific to the Gambia.”
The two organizations hooked up with Computers for the World (C4W) and the Emerald City Rotary Club, which helped provide funding and assistance in areas such as team building and public relations.
“C4W provides students with opportunities for leadership, education and mentoring; identifies safe locations around the world for computers; and assists with funding through Rotary grants,” said Robin Dubrin, C4W President and member of the Emerald City Rotary Club.
The recipient schools in the Gambia were selected based upon their large student populations, rural locations, and reputations as good learning centers. Armitage Senior Secondary School is considered one of the best learning centers in the country, despite its rural locale. Nasir Ahmadiyya is in the poorest and most remote region in the country, but it is a school where the principal believes so strongly in computer education, that he loaned his own PC to the school to supplement the four existing machines used for student instruction.
“Our dream is to have state of the [art] computers all over our lab and school,” said Mr. Mamadi Ceesay, the Principal at Nasir Ahmadiyya. “The intervention of [GambiaHELP, Garfield High, and C4W] will make this a reality.”
And once the Americans return home – how will they know that the labs will remain Viable This is again where GambiaHELP comes in: “Where Garfield and C4W focus on placing computers in developing countries,” said Tartuis, “GambiaHELP’s mission involves building a sustainable economy in the Gambia.”
The organization is currently working with the Gambian Secretary of State for Education to ensure ongoing computer instruction at both schools, and is considering options such as off-hours cyber-cafes to help the labs become financially viable. GambiaHELP is also looking at a follow-up project to install solar power at Nasir Ahmadiyya, where availability of electricity is often erratic.
For the students at Garfield, the project has already served part of its purpose: teaching them skills that will be useful after the project is over.
“I ended up on this project as a way to get out of a typing class,” said Katy Barnhart, a sophomore at Garfield and the project’s Digital Video Specialist. “Now I’ve gained all sorts of experience filming, editing, even interviewing as I document this project from start to finish.”
Project Lead Laura Kanter said: “In addition to all of the technical skills I’ve learned, I now know that being a leader is a lot harder than it looks. There is so much going on, all at once, and in a thousand different directions. But, it gives me more confidence in myself, knowing that I can do it.”
October
2001
Dick's Drive-Ins
3rd Annual Good Deed Awards
Shelby Tarutis (wearing traditional Gambian dress) had contributed thousands of her own dollars and has spent close to 10 years promoting literacy in the West African nation of Gambia. She helps provide books, computers, seed money and human resources for rural libraries and schools. Thank you for your Good Deeds Shelby! Shelby's $100 Dick's Good Deed Donation goes to GambiaHELP!
March
2001
KUOW Radio Appearance
Shelby Tarutis was a guest on Steve Scher’s KUOW Weekday show. Tarutis joined Dr. Gordon Perkin, who heads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health Initiative, and Dr. Mark Kane of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), to discuss health and other initiatives in Africa. You can order a tape or transcript of the show (3.22.01, hour 2).
February
22, 2001
25,000 Books
from Seattle Donors en Route to Gambian Schools
SEATTLE - A shipping container filled with thousands of donated textbooks, children’s books and novels left port in early December and arrived today in The Gambia. The effort is a part of Seattle-based GambiaHELP’s Library Project, aimed at increasing literacy and improving education in the small West African nation.
“There
is only one book for approximately every fifteen students in The Gambia,”
said Shelby Tarutis, Director of GambiaHELP. “You can just imagine
how difficult it is to read a passage or get a lesson completed. What
you end up with is a focus on memorization in the classroom, rather than
on learning to problem solve or participating in interactive discussions.”
The Library Project began last year in the small village of Dankunku, located approximately 160 miles from the capitol city of Banjul With funds and books from Seattle-area donors, GambiaHELP transformed an abandoned storage area into a small library with room for ten students and one volunteer. Small though it is, the library gets ample use, with children in grades 3-7 coming in weekly to check out books. According to Sara Johnston, a volunteer librarian in Dankunku, the school holds assemblies on how to handle books properly, and students have learned to recite “clean hands – clean books!”
Tarutis arrived in the capitol city of Banjul today to help unload and distribute the books, earmarked for 50 schools and resource centers throughout rural Gambia.
“Sustainability
of the library is very important to everyone involved: teachers, community
leaders, students, and volunteers in Seattle and The Gambia,” said
Tarutis. “It is their dedication that has made this program a success.”
Gambia Health Education Liaison Project is a Seattle-based non-profit organization that exists to enable communities in The Gambia to protect, conserve, and improve their own health, the health of their community, and their natural environment. By providing books, educational opportunities, seed money and human resources, GambiaHELP enables communities in The Gambia to build a sustainable economy and environment.
