Madiana School

Since 2014, Project Gambia has supported a school located in a very poor village called Madiana. With nearly 900 students and only 8 classrooms, some of the students attend in the morning and some in the afternoon.  The school has very few resources and classes can have up to 60 students in them. Project Gambia has refurbished classrooms and shipped out desks and chairs donated by UK schools. When we visit it is fantastic to see the tables and chairs in the classrooms making such a difference to the education of the children here.  School resources are also sent on a regular basis.

On one of our visits we were saddened to see that the nursery children were being taught in a classroom that consisted of corrugated sheet walls and a roof made of branches. Fifty children were being taught in a very small space with no tables or chairs and small pieces of wood to write on.  In 2018, we launched the ‘Buy a Brick’ campaign. Our aim was to raise enough money to build two new classrooms. In February 2020 the classroom blocks were completed and being used by Grade 3 and Grade 5 children.

To acknowledge and thank all the schools who had contributed to the building of the classroom block  Ridgewood High School students decorated the end of the classroom block with the logos from each of the schools; then later in the year students from King Edward VI College Stourbridge painted the outside of the building. In February 2020 students from The Royal School Wolverhampton then finished the job by painting the inside of both classrooms.