Mansa Colley Bojang School welcomes partners from Holland

By Lamin Cham A group of students from Jac P Thijsse College in Holland has just completed a weeklong visit to the Mansa Colley Bojang Basic Cycle School in Brikama Jalangbang. The students are the latest batch from the college to visit the Gambian school with funds raised for work in the construction of a building to house the senior secondary school. Cooperation between the two schools started a while ago and now formed the Holland part of the activities of the UK Charity Sponsor A Gambian Child which started and runs the school since 2010. The students are accompanied by teachers Jise and Beau who said the monies were raised through fund raising events and in the same spirit the students traveled to the Gambia to join with members of the community in Jalangbang to continue work in stages on the building which is now near completion. During their stay the students from Holland were lodged at the School, worked with students of Mansa Colley and joined the community to go to local market and cooked Gambian traditional food . Also through the link, about ten Gambian students will be traveling to Holland to take part and share experiences with their counterparts on topics relevant to their education and societies . “We are very generous in this selection because we included students from other schools so as to make an effective Gambian participation, ” said Muctar Bojang founder of the Sponsor A Gambian Child charity. “The Mansa Colley Basic Cycle currently enrolled 633 students with each pupil on full scholarship sponsored by donors mainly from the UK. It is the product of a small initiative I launched called Sponsor A Gambian Child. Initially we were just able to gather sponsorship for individual children across this community but in 2010 I decided to secure place to build a school to push the project to realise its full potential and today we have a full fledged certified Basic Cycle school, born out of and maintained by the Sponsor A Gambian Child Charity, ” said Bojang Academic excellence The Mansa Colley Bojang School has placed a high premium on academic excellence and as a result the school attracts students from the surrounding and faraway schools who came to savour in the school’s good reputation as a center for excellence in academic studies . ” We have a good administration and a brilliant set of teachers who are charged with the day to day running of the school. We make sure that the teachers are comfortably remunerated so they give the best standard of education to the pupils who come from Brikama, Jalangba, Yundum, Farato and even beyond , ” he said. ” I am profoundly delighted that this project has succeeded in bringing hope and education to a large number of our future generation and satisfaction to our many donors who parted with their monies to support and build the lives of people they may never know. I am happy that we have been able to live up to their trust and will continue to do that “, Muctar Bojang concluded]]>