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Book Project
GambiaHELP for the third year in a row is sponsoring a book project consisting of the shipping of a container of new and used books primarily designated for rural schools in The Gambia. For most of these schools, books are a rarity and almost none have libraries. This year GambiaHELP, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and U.S. Peace Corps will be delivering over 10,000 books throughout almost all of The Gambia. The container was loaded by volunteers and shipped on December 19, 2002 and is expected to arrive in early February 2003. Shelby Tarutis will be on hand to supervise the unloading of the container and the shipping of the books to the various schools and libraries within The Gambia.

Joanne Wysong, a volunteer, will be traveling with Shelby Tarutis to assist teachers in rural schools in working with their new books and conducting in-services for teacher training. Ms. Wysong is traveling at her own expense to fulfill a lifelong dream of going to Africa although she never expected to combine travelling to Africa with her life's work of working with children. Ms. Wysong has an associate ASA degreen in Childhood Education and a Montessori Directorship degree. She owned and operated a home daycare for nine years. Ms. Wysong is expected to bring a wealth of skills and dynamic new approaches to the various rural schools where she will be volunteering.

Micro Lending Project
The micro lending project has begun with the purchase of a rice milling machine and it is expected that the machine will be dedicated in February 2003.

Beverly Harrington is also joining Shelby Tarutis as a volunteer to work with the Molu group on issues of micro-lending. She is also responsible for her own costs and expenses while in the country. Ms. Harrington will also be visiting with other credit unions, NGO’s and similar groups in The Gambia. She has been involved in the credit union movement since 1976. Initially, Ms. Harrington was a volunteer on a Board of Directors. She later served as the CEO of several credit unions . She is currently working on a project to organize a new credit union (New American Credit Union) to serve immigrants and low-income people in the Seattle area. Once chartered, the New American Credit Union will represent the second credit union that Ms. Harrington has helped to charter.

In 1983 Ms. Harrington was trained by the World Council of Credit Unions as a Development Educator and she has since participated in the program as a Regional Liaison and as a mentor for several new classes of Development Educators. Ms. Harrington initially visited The Gambia in 1994 while attending the WOCCU Women's Symposium and the International Credit Union Forum.