Seeing is believing

Written by Jonathan Evans OBE

Seeing really is believing! 

My wife has been Company Secretary of the AOT for a few years now, and I have always been inspired by the reports I have heard and read – at second hand of course - of the projects the Trust is involved with in The Gambia. 

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But it was not until Gill and I spent a week in The Gambia in February that I
fully understood just what amazing and transformational work the AOT does!

We fell in love immediately with The Gambia, a beautiful country with a majestic river, spectacular wildlife (we saw 125 species of bird in a week!), in the midst of which 1½ million people live their lives. 

Most Gambians we met seemed happy: welcoming, smiling faces greeted us  wherever we went, and even the tourist-harassing bumsters” plied their trade with a grin (most of the time).  But apart from a small and growing middle class, most Gambians live in poverty – on one scale The Gambia is the 176th poorest nation on Earth.  This is poverty in material terms: there is only a primitive basic infrastructure – water, sanitation, power, transport – and limited health and education provision, especially for small children. 

And this is where charities like the African Oyster Trust make such a difference.  We visited three of the Trust’s nursery school projects, and indeed  saw the new Stepping Stones nursery being built.

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The overwhelming view we were left with is how well the Trust is being run on  the ground, with every £ donated in the UK being put to maximum value in The  Gambia. 

Thanks to Kira Dalton’s amazing energy and Fanding’s careful oversight of the projects, the cost of providing and maintaining a nursery school is remarkably low.  Measured in terms of the benefit brought to
children’s education, the payback for every £ is astonishing!

To visit one of the Trust’s nursery schools, to see and hear how the children are enjoying being taught to read and write and sing, to talk to their committed teachers, is the best form of persuasion that here is a very worthy cause.

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