‘Go for Gambia’ Fundraising Campaign

As many of you know Mrs Gardner, with help from ICA helps to support a school in Gambia. This summer the staff, students past and present and family members from the community of ICA helped to take part in #GoForGambia run by The Pempamsie Foundation to raise awareness of and money for the students from the school who were unable to carry on with their education at home due to lockdown and the Corona Virus. The information below explains why money needed to be raised and how important the support weas that we were able to give them. As we are all aware 2020 has grounded us with coronavirus. Without planes travelling to The Gambia, the country is greatly missing tourists, its largest industry. This has meant a lack of income for many Gambians, but it also meant a lack of funding for infrastructures like schools, due to government funding being used to tackle the pandemic. The Pempamsie Foundation created the ‘Go for Gambia’ campaign, which ran for the whole month of August. The aim was to complete 2500 nautical miles between England and The Gambia. We challenged everyone to walk, run, bike, scoot, skip or swim as many miles as they could throughout August. The ICA community tracked their progress- took pictures, screen grabbed their routes- and posted to our campaign to inspire others...and inspire it did!! Everyone involved pledged their distance and got sponsors and working together we were able to cover the miles between the UK and The Gambia raising much needed funds.

What projects did the money go towards? We worked hard to create distance learning packages for primary students in The Gambia. These were be used to support parents with home-based learning because school have not yet opened up; if the students are lucky enough to return to the classroom, these will help students to make up for some learning lost during the time in lockdown. We also working on creating distance learning training for staff at primary schools in The Gambia. After becoming accustomed to online meetings and teaching, we are creating a programme to help teachers with targeted areas of professional development. This will require purchasing the equipment to be used in The Gambia. A massive 3,748 miles was completed in the month of August and a huge £810 raised by the amazing staff, past and present students, including one amazing Year 6 Poppy who is now a Year 7 (and loving life at ICA) who took part in the #GoForGambia campaign by the The Pempamsie Foundation. Please enjoy the photos of the school children from The Gambia with their home learning packs and the staff, families taking part in the activities which enables us to smash the 2,500 miles. Such a wonderful achievement thank you to everyone who took part! A special thank you goes to Seb and his mummy Mrs Colquitt who raised over £200 themselves