Sunday 4 March 2012

Today I attended a meeting of the Bakassouck Youth's Association (Gambia Chapter), invited by Lamin's brother Numo. This is a self-organised group of young people whose families come from Bakassouck, an island in Casamance, Southern Senegal, where many of them grew up. They meet monthly for a number of purposes, but this month the main focus was to discuss a bee-keeping project they are developing, as a means of providing employment and income for their members.

This project was their own idea, and although at the moment they are reliant on help from the Kumoo Kunda Bee Farm, (a local bee-keeping project), they are determined to become independent and make it sustainable. They have allocated a budget (mainly drawn from the monthly subscriptions), and have a clear plan about how they want things to develop.

The meeting was held in a mixture of English and Karoninka, but they regularly summarised things for me, and Lamin was also there to help provide translation! After the 'official' business of reading minutes from the last meeting and a financial report, they got down to business.

So far they have had five people trained in bee-keeping, which includes how to build hives, look after the bees, and also how to make products such as soap, skin cream etc form the honey and beeswax. Two of these have had advanced training so they are now able to train others. They have also used the facilities of the existing bee-keeping project to make the products, which they encouraged people to buy. Each trainee gave a verbal reports to the meeting.

They have invested in 10 hives, which have been deployed already and now eight of them are occupied. They are expecting their first harvest in a couple of weeks. However, at the moment they are hampered by lack of equipment and facilities which means they have to rely on hiring the Kumoo Kunda Centre to produce their goods. They encouraged everyone to think about how they could contribute to help e.g. buying a soap mould for D50 (about £1), buckets, storage containers etc. The soaps and creams are chemical free and good quality. The plan is that group members buy the products at a wholesale rate and sell them on with a mark-up. This would give them funds to buy more products, but could also provide an income. It could even be combined with schooling, so the profit could be used for paying school fees. Everyone was encouraged to buy at least one item.

They have been given some land in one of the local villages to build a training centre which they will staff and equip themselves, and so they also want to raise funds towards this. However, start-up costs are high e.g. a wooden hive costs D650 (about £14, almost a month's wages). The trainees know how to train others how to build grass hives, which are cheaper, but at the end of the season the hives are dismantled to obtain the honey, so the bees disperse – in other words, this is a cheaper option than using wooden hives, but not as cost-effective. However, one of the group was a skilled carpenter, and offered to build hives for free if the group could supply the materials. Another problem is the siting of hives – the group needs offers of places to site the hives (we have already offered them space at Balaba for this, but they need more).

After discussing some other issues, each member of the executive committee gave an impassioned plea to the members to make sacrifices in order to make the bee-keeping project successful, and also the other projects they are committed to. (I subsequently found out they have started building a primary school on their remote island, as there the nearest school too far away for the younger children to walk). They were keenly aware that family members in the past had made sacrifices to enable them to succeed, and so it was now their turn to make sacrifices to benefit today's children.

There is a big focus in The Gambia at the moment on youth employment and vocational training. A recent report by the International Monetary Fund has produced some alarming statistics about the number of young people who are unemployed, many with little prospect of accessing training or education to help them. It seems to me that this project is addressing many of the issues raised in that report, and perhaps more importantly, doing it themselves rather than waiting for an external organisation to produce a solution. I really hope it succeeds.

As a footnote, I happened to catch sight of the notes taken by the chairman (who was also leading the meeting). Although everyone had spoken in English or Karoninka (usually a mixture of both), his notes were in French! The language skills of everyone in The Gambia put me to shame when I think of my very poor efforts.