Speaking at the commencement of a three-day training programme in Banjul as part of a campaign aimed at augmenting the awareness quotient of communities on the harmful effects of FGM and other related issues funded by the Girl Generation and Human Dignity Foundation, she said:
“This is just the beginning of what we want for the women and the youths of The Gambia. We want to see to it that the women and youths in the country are empowered at all levels, to start a booth campaign at community level to work with women and youths. Part of the campaign is to open a centre for women and children, thereby giving them free access to a clinic which will be operating free of charge. It is going to be open to all women and youths at a place they can come and be safe so that they can receive services. At the start of the campaign in partnership with Think Young Women, we organised the first national youth forum which brought together over one hundred youths from various regions in the country who participated in a four-day training in October. I think the development of the country is a collective responsibility.”
Aji Awa Sillah-Njie, the deputy mayor of Banjul on behalf of the mayor declared: “In The Gambia, although there is a good understanding of the harmful effects of gender-based violence, it is still very important that we continue the work on sensitisation to ensure that there is no room left for such behaviour in our society. One of the activities that are mostly identified with gender-based violence is the practice of FGM. It is therefore necessary that adequate and correct information on this subject is shared so that women and the girl-child are properly guided.”
The national coordinator of Think Young Women, Amie Kujabi expressed hope that the ‘booth campaign’ will attract a high number of people seeking information on gender-based violence and FGM.
“The issue of gender-based violence is one of the challenges that we as young women and women in general are facing.
We as young people feel that it is important and necessary for us to have this particular campaign to know more about it but also to give out some of the information that we have at our own level. We are not only going to stop at that but we also want to know the way forward to make sure that violence against women in general is not happening in the country. That is why this particular ‘booth campaign’ came about. We have erected the booth next to St Therese’s church where we believe that we will be able to have a good number of people who will be going and coming around that end and they will be stopping by to access information.”
]]>
