By Olimatou Coker
Fatoumatta Jammeh Jeng, the Chief Executive Officer and the founder of the Single Mothers Scheme, has said that the organization can’t bring every single mother on board but they want to help 75% or 90% of single mothers in the country.
CEO Jammeh made these remarks on Saturday during a training held at Banjul with some single mothers.
She said they started with some single mothers in communities like London Corner and they realize that the rate of single mothers in the country is very high.
She highlighted that the gathering is not political and it has nothing to do with government. She said if the government or any other organization meets them in what they do they will appreciate it. “Our target is to reach out to all the 7 regions in the country; every single mother should know about SMS because we are going to impact their lives”.
“We did a survey in Banjul to know the percentage of single mothers in Banjul as a city, which we end up realizing that Banjul alone has 398 single mothers and, unfortunately, that’s not even from all the wards because Banjul has 9 wards and we have only 7 wards that we covered”.
According to her, they got inspired from the last meeting they held in other communities. “Another community inspired us to come to Banjul and Banjul has the highest number of single mothers encountered so far”.
She also explained that they did research and later learned that 75% of the children on the streets are from single mothers’ homes which is so touching.
She said the solution is not to remove children from the streets or give them money, saying instead they want to help the parents by coming up with something better for them to be able to take care of their children.
“Coming to my own experience, I am from a single mother background. My mum was a single mother; she struggled in and out to make sure that I attend the best schools and further to the university. So my experience plus the love I have for the children is what inspired me to come up with this organization.”
Mrs Jammeh Jeng said SMS provides different skills training for single mothers such as sewing, recycling, beaty therapy, cleaning services, nduga services and laundry services just to name a few.
Fama Cham, program coordinator of SMS, said they plan to help these single mothers to stand on their own and to be able to take care of their children.
Fatou Mbye, member of SMS, said women are going through a lot and they think it is high time to end the struggle women are going through in the various communities.
