Scores of people converged at the Gunjur Daycare Centre for the grand launching of Gunjur Development Association, an offshoot of The Gunjur Development Fund.
The Association aims to bring all cultural and ethnic groups in Gunjur together without regard to ethnicity, political affiliation, or religion.
Delivering the keynote address Zainab Faal, GDA Public Relations Officer, eloquently narrated the contributions of the coastal town and its inhabitants in the development of the Gambia, prominent among them was the late Alhagi Famara Wassa Touray during the country’s independence struggle.
She said The Fund had equally done a remarkable job for the citizens of Gunjur and the new association aims to build on that.
“At the inception of Gunjur Development Fund in 2000/2001, our main focus was to help our community in areas we felt were crucial to the Socio-Economic development of our people locally. At that time some of the projects we embarked on were the following:
*Renovation/Upgrade of the Gunjur Central Mosque.
* Fencing of the Nyamina Soccer field.
* Road Rehabilitation.
*Purchase of a funeral van for the community of Gunjur.
* Milling Machine at the Co-operative to help Village women from pounding their cereal produce.
* Installation of a Water pump for the provision of clean water to the community.
* A cyber café was constructed but was unfortunately burnt down before being put into use.
* Provision of two metal coffins that are stationed at the RVH mortuary in Banjul to help in the transportation of the deceased.
*Support of a summer support program.
* Academic Excellence Awards to outstanding students.
* Sponsorship classroom blocks at Khalid Bun Walid School.
* Helped in the provision of funds for Village Gamo and a cash donation towards the resettlement of a Gunjur native from Thailand.
“Our aim is to promote and foster unity among the people of Gunjur and promote and enhance human capital, material and natural resources of Gunjur for the socio-economic as well as educational advancement of Gunjur and its people. We want to partake in all investment decisions making processes and activities to act as an advocate for Gunjur in an effort to promote and preserve our culture, customs, languages and traditions of the people of Gunjur.
In this process, we envision to cooperate and liaise with the government and other organizations with similar objectives involving self-help projects and public sensitization exercises, educational or extracurricular activities such as debates, seminars, traditional and cultural shows, sports etc.
Some of these activities will be used as a means of revenue generation to help the organization to realize some of its objectives of self-reliance like self-employment, self –development, promotion of personal responsibility, high ethical and moral values to help realize each person’s potential. While we strongly believe in self-help, governmental, donor agencies, NGOs assistance will always be welcomed to complement our collective efforts of fostering development in our community.
“As we embark on this new development partnership, we want to inform this gathering of a successful tree planting exercise we carried out on in collaboration with The Geology Department in an effort to repair the damage of sand mining around some parts of our coastline has caused.
Through a massive outpouring of support the community in Gunjur with help from the Gunjur community in the diaspora, a total of more than 11,500 plants were planted. We also raised over One Hundred and Fifteen Thousand Dalasis that will be used towards the refurbishment of the equipment at the Gunjur Health Center in the coming weeks and months. As we move on with these projects, we are asking for full support from the community, local authorities and the Central government,” she said.
The Chief of Kombo South Lamin Darboe as well the Alkalo, VDC chair and ward councilor all gave assurance that they will give their full support to the association.
