Generous
Donation (September 24, 2003)
Thank
You! Thank You! Thank You! (October 2003)
Health
Care Texts Needed for New Resource Center (September
2003)
Heartfelt
Thanks from Recipient School in The Gambia (August
2003)
Grant Received from
Books for Africa (August 2003)
Mercer Island High School Students Conduct Book Drive (June 2003)
Water
to Be First Focus for Post-Summit Action as Meeting on Sustainable
Development Concludes (May
2003)
Ten Ways You Can Help (May 2003)
Book
Sorting Parties a Huge Success (May 2003)
US
Rice Aid for Gambia (April 2003)
GambiaHELP
begins landmark Milling Machine Project to fight rural poverty
and facilitate economic and social freedoms; the organization sends
another 10,000 books to West Africa. (January
2003)
Money Frozen
(January 2003)
WSU Student Rescues Books
(January 2003)
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to Current News
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to 2005 News Archive
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to 2004 News Archive
Generous
Donation
September 24, 2003
On September 24, 2003, librarians, Linda Woodruff and Gail Waller, donated 20
boxes of books to GambiaHELP's library development project. These books will
go towards the development of libraries in rural villages of The Gambia, West
Africa.
Thank
You! Thank You! Thank You!
October 2003
The First Annual Fall Auction was a great financial success and
on top of that everyone had a good time! See photos.
All of us at GambiaHELP are very happy about the evening and
what we were all able to accomplish by working together.We
also want to send a special thank you to all of the donors, both large and
small,
who helped to make the auction a possible. Without their generosity
the auction would not have been possible.
Currently, Shelby Tarutis, Executive Director, is in The Gambia helping to make arrangements for the delivery of books and materials in the next few months. At the auction, enough attendees “bought” bookcases so that GambiaHELP can establish an entire library at one school. Shelby is now working with Gambian volunteers, Peace Corps volunteers and others to begin the process of selecting a school. She is also visiting the village of Dankunku and speaking with the Neema Kaafo Women’s Group. When she returns, she will provide you with an update of her trip and outline the projects that GambiaHELP will be sponsoring in the next several months.
Again, thank you to everyone. Your gifts, donations and purchases are helping to make a difference in the lives of children in West Africa.
Health
Care Texts Needed for New Resource Center
GambiaHELP was recently contacted by Cristopher Gualberto, a
U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, who lives and works as a health educator
in the small village of Kiang Karantaba in the country's Lower River
Division. Cristopher Gualberto is working on the creation of a small
medical library for Karantaba's clinic which will provide valuable treatment
and research resource for the health care professionals in the area.
The medical library needs texts in the following areas: HIV and AIDS,
tropical medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, environmental sanitation,
pediatric medicine, geriatric medicine, and general surgery. If you or
anyone you know has access or knowledge of these types of medical texts
that could be sent to The Gambia, please contact Shelby Tarutis by email or
by phone (206-523-6924).
Heartfelt
Thanks from Recipient School in The Gambia
GambiaHELP recently
received a letter from one of the 2003 book recipient schools. The
Library Committee expressed their heartfelt thanks for the books received
and the contribution these books will make to their school's educational
achievement. Their letter is reproduced below.
Medina
Seringe Mass Basic Cycle School
Lower Nuimi District
North Bank Division
August 28, 2003
Dear Madam:
On behalf of the entire institution and on our own behalf as the library committee, we write to formally thank you for your support. Our school library is what it is today because of your valuable support and contribution. We want to reciprocate by thanking you in writing. From the bottom of our hearts and depth of our souls, your support materially, is highly appreciated.
Moreover, the learning materials which have been sent to us were timely. they came at a time when we were reconstructing our school library. These materials will go a long way in improving the academic excellence of our students. At our present level or status as a basic cycle school we can boast among many schools that our library is a standard one. Our students now can read so diversely. All teachers consult the library in order to facilitate an easy learning environment in their various classes.
In addition to this, you can be fully assured that the learning materials given to our school, particularly those in the library, will be properly maintained. We are cognizant of your kind gesture and love for the advancement of education in The Gambia.
Finally, we, the members of the Library Committee, treasure and value your support. Words through writing will be very weak to express our sincere appreciation. Although far physically, we know you are with us in our academic pursuit.
Yours Faithfully,
Maam Faatim Senghore
Library Committee Chairman
Grant
Received From Books for Africa
Shelby Tarutis, Executive Director of GambiaHELP, announced that GambiaHELP has
received a grant from Books for Africa to
partially defer the price of shipping a container of books which is planned for
late Fall 2003. For 4 straight years, GambiaHELP has shipped a container of books
and assisted in their distribution to schools throughout The Gambia. Within The
Gambia, GambiaHELP has been praised for its continuing efforts and is reported
to be have delivered the largest number of books to The Gambia in the last decade.
Books For Africa was founded in 1988 as a non-profit organization by Tom Warth, whose dream was to ship donated books to the children of Africa. Tom's visit to a Ugandan library, where books were almost non-existent, inspired him to create a system for collecting discarded books from American schools, libraries and publishers to send to Africa. Books For Africa has shipped more than 8 million books since its inception.
Similar to Tom Warth, Shelby Tarutis, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, made a promise to her village to bring books to The Gambia. Until her efforts, a majority of the rural schools had literally no books. Now, some of these schools has a library available without charge to all of the students. The sharing of resources between Books for Africa and GambiaHELP is “a natural fit” reports Ms. Tarutis who also notes that this is the second BFA grant that GambiaHELP has received.
Shipping a container of books costs over $4,000 plus in-country costs for transportation in difficult terrain to rural villages. The BFA grant will provide $750 toward this expense, but a great more is still needed. GambiaHELP is planning an auction on October 18, 2003 as it’s major fund raiser in support of the library project and to further efforts concerning a micro lending project already in place. Donations are tax deductible and can be made at any time on this website or by mail. The children of The Gambia need your help. The children of The Gambia are waiting. Please join with GambiaHELP and Books for Africa and make a difference.
Mercer
Island High School Students Conduct Book Drive
June 2003
Students Marielle Goyette and Vicky Hue, both 17 years of age and sophomores
have donated 273 books to GambiaHELP. The books were collected in a school
book drive effort initiated by the girls. They set up book drops around the
school, sent home flyers to parents and students during a 3-week period from
May-June 2003. When asked what motivated them to take on such a project Marielle
commented that she wanted to help out in some way. She was wondering how much
people would contribute. She particularly wanted to know this because other
project “bins” had been kicked over by some students. She said
she was fortunate, many people contributed to the book drive and that no one
disturbed the collection bins. She also said that even though there was another
book drive earlier than theirs, students came out and contributed. Collection
bins were checked every week to prevent over-filling.
The children of The Gambia were thankful to receive these books in March 2004.
United
Nations Press Release
Water to Be First Focus for Post-Summit Action
as Meeting on Sustainable Development Concludes
New York – 12 May 2003
The follow-up to
the Johannesburg Summit will focus on water, sanitation and human settlements
for the first two years, decided the Commission on Sustainable Development
at the end of its annual meeting last Friday. By concentrating on a
few issues every two-year cycle, the Commission – the United
Nations body that monitors implementation of sustainable development
commitments – signaled its intention to make practical steps
towards making sustainable development a reality.
"Unless something dramatically new happens, we are not going to reach our
goals of providing 200,000 people with access to freshwater every day and 300,000
people with access to sanitation each day. The United Nations is very conscious
of that," said Mr. Nitin Desai, head of the United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs and Secretary-General of the World Summit on Sustainable
Development held in Johannesburg, South Africa, last September.
Some 1.2 billion people, or 18 per cent of the world's population, lack access to safe drinking water, and over 2.4 billion people (40 per cent of the world's people) lack access to adequate sanitation. More than 2.2 million people in developing countries, most of them children, die each year from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
At the Johannesburg Summit, governments reaffirmed the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015, and set a new target to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by the same year. At the present rate of investment, universal access to safe drinking water cannot reasonably be anticipated before 2050 in Africa, 2040 in Latin America and the Caribbean and 2025 in Asia.
"It is very good that water is our first focus," added Mr. Desai. "There were many big initiatives on water and sanitation launched in Johannesburg, so we can test whether the Commission can really put pressure on making them happen."
The decision to focus on water, sanitation and human settlements for the next two-year cycle came at the end of a two-week meeting in which some 40 Ministers and other government representatives, joined by heads of United Nations agencies and other international organizations and over 900 representatives of non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders, decided how to bolster implementation of programmes and goals agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit and last year's Johannesburg Summit.
A Long-Range Plan Towards Sustainability
The Commission's two-year "implementation cycles" include review and policy years. The review year will evaluate progress made in implementing development goals and identify obstacles and constraints, while the policy year will decide on measures to speed up implementation and mobilize action to overcome these obstacles and constraints.
The two-year cycles form part of a larger multi-year programme of work, with different thematic clusters of issues for each cycle, beginning with the period 2004/2005 and ending with 2014/2015. The Commission has decided that the second two-year cycle of work, for 2006/2007, should focus on energy for sustainable development, industrial development, air pollution, atmosphere and climate change.
Subsequent two-year cycles will focus on: agriculture, rural development, land, drought, desertification and Africa (2008/2009); transport, chemicals waster management, mining, and a ten-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production patterns (2010/2011); forests, biodiversity, biotechnology, tourism and mountains (2012/2013); oceans and seas, marine resources, small island developing States, and disaster management and vulnerability (2014/2015).
In order to retain flexibility in case new priorities should arise in future, the Commission has reserved the right to amend the thematic clusters for the last three cycles. In every cycle, a number of cross-cutting issues will be addressed, such as poverty eradication, changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, health, education and sustainable development in a globalizing world, as well as means of implementation.
The years 2016 to 2017 will be devoted to an overall appraisal of the implementation of Agenda 21, the Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.
The Commission also took a range of decisions on other practical issues relating to its future programme and methods of work. These included: enhancing the role of regional and sub-regional inputs to the CSD process; making reporting mechanisms more effective; promoting greater collaboration and cohesion between sustainable development activities undertaken by the UN system and other international institutions; and strengthening the involvement of major groups in the activities of the CSD.
Building on work undertaken through the WSSD process to encourage partnerships between governments, major groups and other stakeholders for implementing sustainable development initiatives on the ground, delegates also agreed on a set of criteria and guidelines for partnerships wanting to be recognized by the Commission, and decided that they should report regularly on their progress.
The Commission elected H.E. Børge Brende, Norway's Minister of Environment, as Chairman of its next annual session.
More information
and the final text of the Commission's resolution can be found on the official
website.
Media
Contact:
Klomjit Chandrapanya
UN Department of Public Information
Tel: +1 212 963 9495
Fax: +1 212 963 1186
E-mail: mediainfo@un.org
Ten
Ways You Can Help
In The Gambia, there is currently only one book for every fifteen
students. A lot of people wish to help GambiaHELP and the children
of The Gambia.
You can always volunteer at book sorting parties or give a donation,
but what if you can’t or are from outside the Seattle area?
Is there another way to assist the GambiaHELP and the goal of
providing educational
and health assistance to the peoples of The Gambia? Most definitely!
Below are ten ideas how to collect and donate books for the children
of The
Gambia.
| 1. |
Start a neighborhood
or group based book. Collect books and raise the funds needed to
ship them to our warehouse. We would then index and sort the books
for shipment to The Gambia. You can also index the book boxes yourself.
For a reference of the type of books needed, check out our Book
Donation Guidelines. |
|
| 2. |
Raise pledges/funds
to purchase children’s books and/or books by African authors.
Or, do research to identify books by African authors, locate and
purchase them for shipment to The Gambia. Have group help you. |
|
| 3. |
Locate book
publishers like Scholastic Books, for example, and ask for donations
of books for children. |
|
| 4. |
Ask your local
newspaper and others that review books for publishers for books.
These may be given to you for free or at reduced cost. |
|
| 5. |
Select a high
school or grade school, contact the principal and see if they would
like to do a community service project. The children can bring a
book to donate to the Gambian children. I have done this and then
had pen pal exchanges with the student. This has been very effective
and the children love to learn about one another. I would be happy
to identify a school in The Gambia to partner with a school in your
area. |
|
| 6. |
If you belong
to a church, ask the minister if he/she would be willing to give
one Sunday’s offering to the children in The Gambia. These
funds can be used to purchase children’s books, paper, and
pencils. Sometimes a church has a social action committee that can
be approached for support. |
|
| 7. | Go
to your local thrift stores and see if there are books there and they
are in good condition. Sometimes they can be sold to you for reduced
cost because GambiaHELP is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization. |
|
| 8. | Place
an ad asking for book donations in the newspaper, work newsletter,
bulletin board or local library. |
|
| 9. | Have
a dinner party and have each person bring their favorite children’s
book to donate to Gambian children. Then brainstorm with the group
about book collecting and see if others will join you in your efforts. |
|
| 10. | If
you are a member of any other group, see if they would be interested
in collecting books. Our Seattle branch of the American Association
of University Women is contributing books and computers to The Gambia.
They are also excellent at communicating our needs to others –
educators, librarians, books clubs, etc. |
Book
Sorting Parties a Huge Success
On April 19th and May 18, 2003, volunteers from GambiaHELP took
time from their everyday activities to donate their weekend to sorting
books that will eventually go to children in The Gambia. We have had wonderful
turn-outs; ranging from 10-15 volunteers, we gathered at the Bel-Red Storage
Unit to sort through books donated by individuals throughout the Pacific
Northwest. We caught up on world events and had a delicious lunch prepared
by Chef Gerry. To date, we have over 16,000 books donated so far and that
brings us only 9,000 short of our 25,000 goal by December 2003!
A big thank you goes to Mr. Ameche of Bel-Red Self Storage for donating the 2 storage unit spaces to GambiaHELP.
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
US
Rice Aid for Gambia
The Independent [Banjul] News
April 28, 2003
The United States government said its USAID Office of Food for Peace,
is poised to provide 1,000 metric tons of rice to The Gambia to help alleviate
the crop shortfall caused by inadequate rains last season. A statement
from the US Embassy in Banjul indicated that this food assistance is in
response to request from the government of The Gambia and the World Food
Programme (WFP) and is in addition to the 1,000 metric tons of wheat announced
last month.
The shipments of rice and wheat are expected to arrive in Banjul next month [May] and the World Food Programme will receive the commodities and distribute them with the assistance of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Gambia Food and Nutrition Association (GAFNA). The total value of both the rice and the wheat (including shipping and administrative costs) amounts to $1,092,000.
January,
2003
GambiaHELP
begins landmark Milling Machine Project to fight rural poverty and
facilitate economic and social freedoms; the organization sends another
10,000 books to West Africa.
Press Contact:
Michelle Lewis, (206) 523-6924
In The Gambia, a small country in West Africa, many families survive on only one meal a day. For the women, their biggest challenges are feeding their families, keeping them healthy, and struggling to earn a few dollars to send their children to school. After working in the rice fields for much of the day, each woman and her children will spend many hours pounding rice in a mortar so that there will be food to eat. At the end of such a long day, there is little energy left to begin the process of change.
GambiaHELP, (Gambia Health Education Liaison Project) a non-profit organization with offices in Seattle and Serre Kunda in The Gambia, is committed to helping these women. As part of their Womens Empowerment Program, GambiaHELP is purchasing a rice milling machine, and instituting training courses for these women in mechanical maintenance, management and finances, and micro-lending. The machine will facilitate food preparation, reduce the amount of intense physical labor required to pound rice in a mortar, and enable the women to pound rice for other villages at a small profit. By the end of this three-year project, which begins this February, the women will not only have the machine to facilitate their daily work to support their families, but will be able to run a small bank and lending institution with milled grains as collateral. The project is thus addressing needs in the areas of family health; education, including job skills; and social equality, as the women of the village work toward economic freedom.
The Milling Machine Project is one of the most promising and ambitious projects that GambiaHELP has sponsored to date. Past projects for the organization, run by former Peace Corps volunteer Shelby Tarutis, have included building and stocking libraries at schools in rural villages and creating computer labs at rural high schools. Last year, GambiaHELP partnered with the technology program at Seattle’s Garfield High School and Computers for the World to offer local students the opportunity to build both the labs and "a better understanding of the world" (from a feature in the Seattle Times, March 2002).
In addition to the Milling Machine Project, GambiaHELP has completed another successful Book Project, collecting and sending more than 10,000 donated books to schools in every region of The Gambia. In three years of Book Projects, GambiaHELP has sent 50,000 books to schools and community centers. The organization is also sending used clothing and medical equipment including wheelchairs and stretchers, that are being donated to The Gambian Red Cross.
 |
 |
|
| Volunteers waiting to load container | Volunteers loading stretchers bound for The Gambian Red Cross | |
 |
 |
|
| Volunteers loading wheelchairs bound for The Gambian Red Cross | Volunteers
loading the container
|
Money
Frozen
The Continent Bank
has frozen all of its accounts including the GambiaHELP bank account.
See new story here.
GambiaHELP desperately needs donations to temporarily replace these frozen
funds until the bank problem is solved. Your immediate assistance is necessary
to allow GambiaHELP to continue the micro lending
project while Shelby Tarutis is in the country. Donation
Form.
WSU
Student Rescues Books
Washington
State University student, Rebecca Fritch, arranged for the rescue and
delivery of four pallets of new and used books destined for the trash
bin. She coordinated with the WSU bookstore to collect the books and then
coordinated the donation of a moving truck to deliver the books to GambiaHELP.
She and her brother then drove the books from Eastern Washington to Seattle
to deliver them. Here is her story:
I
was raised in a household that fostered a great love of education and books.
My parents had each kept many of their college texts. I can't count the
number of school projects that brought me to the bookshelf to research my
topic. Once I entered college I knew that I wanted that same opportunity
for my children in the future and decided not to sell back my texts. I was
curious about the process and inquired into what happened to the unwanted
books. It shocked me to discover that the books having no retail value (usually
due to a new edition being published) were sent to the University recycling
center to be recycled for the value of the paper. This fact bothered me,
but it wasn't until I participated in a diplomatic mission to South Africa
and saw the desire in the young people's eyes for an education. Once I had
seen this hunger I knew that I had to do what I could to help. I began researching
programs that salvage books and send them to impoverished areas of the world.
With the cooperation of many individuals and organizations, I was able to
save nearly 5,300 pounds of textbooks in December of 2002 and another 2,600
pounds in spring 2003. Although I have recently received word that I am
unable to use this project as my honors college thesis project I am still
dedicated to spending many hours organizing this project so that it will
continue in the years to follow. – Rebecca Fritch
