Life-changing experience for King’s Hawford teacher

The charity Project Gambia is well-known and loved by the King’s Hawford community, having been one of the School’s nominated charities for the last three years.

Each year, Project Gambia offers those schools who support the charity with fund raising and donations the chance to visit The Gambia, giving pupils and staff the opportunity to observe the difference their hard work in fund-raising makes first hand. Miss Lane, Reception teacher at King’s Hawford, was delighted to take up this once in a life-time opportunity and visit The Gambia during the Easter Holidays.

Miss Lane joined the Project Gambia Team, accompanying twenty-three Years Nine and Ten pupils and three of their teachers from Bartley Green School in Birmingham on their adventure.

It is rare that they have the company of a primary school teacher on one of these visits, so Miss Lane was delighted to be asked to provide ideas for activities which would be appropriate for same-aged children in The Gambia. In addition, Miss Lane put together some Mathematics and assessment training for their teachers.

Sharing details of her adventure, Miss Lane explained that mornings were spent packing bags with activities for the schools they were visiting that day. Everything needed to be taken with them, as the schools in The Gambia have few if any resources like crayons and felt tips. For many children, the only equipment they have is in the pencil-cases filled by King’s Hawford pupils last year.

During the course of her trip, Miss Lane visited five different schools repeatedly throughout the week. These included St Peter’s Nursery, OMEGA School, Wisdom Nursery, Spring of Life and The Methodist Special School. All the schools had tiny classrooms, with upwards of 50 children in each.

One particularly special classroom visit was to the new classrooms at St Peter’s built using the money raised last year by Ffion, a Year Three pupil at King’s Hawford, and Tiegan, a Year Two pupil at King’s St Alban’s. These were a much-needed addition to the site and make a huge difference in terms of space for children to learn: very well done girls.

During the afternoons, Miss Lane rolled up her sleeves and helped give some of the classrooms a makeover, whitewashing walls and repainting educational pictures onto them; anyone who knows Miss Lane will understand that Art is not her strong point (or so she says!), so she stuck to alphabets! When not painting, Miss Lane was delivering training and attending meetings with teachers to offer advice and support, as well as visiting the Kotusilo Community, a village on the edge of a rubbish dump, to hand out mosquito nets and care packages.

Upon her return to King’s Hawford, Miss Lane shared two of the highlights of her time in The Gambia, firstly, visiting the Wisdom School, with which King’s Hawford have a particularly strong link. Emanuel, the Lead Teacher, was thrilled to have a King’s visitor and was extremely grateful for all the support we have given to them. Through their fundraising and donation efforts, King’s Hawford have contributed to the school’s feeding programme, providing children with their only meal of the day, usually rice and beans, and a canopy shelter. The school was gifted a King’s Hawford class bear and wall hanging, which had been given pride of place by the time Miss Lane left.

The second highlight was that, upon visiting the Kotusilo Community, Miss Lane came across two children wearing King’s uniform which had previously been donated to Project Gambia and shipped out. It was wonderful to see it so gratefully received and being put to very good use.

Life in The Gambia is obviously so very different from what we have here. It is easy to use the phrase “life-changing experience”, but this truly was just that. Miss Lane intends to continue to work with the charity as much as she can, taking on the role of social media and online communications support and visiting again during the school holidays, hopefully next year, to develop their Early Years Mathematics programme further.