A three-day training programme, organised by the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (Gamcotrap) for senior decision-makers of the Department of State for Education (DoSE), recently kicked off at the Girls-Guide Headquarters in Kanifing.

The training is meant to strengthen collaboration between DoSE and Gamcotrap to enable them mainstream children’s rights and matters that deal with traditional practices affecting their well-being, particularly the girl child in the school curriculum.

In her opening remarks, Dr. Isatou Touray, Executive Director of Gamcotrap, said that her organisation is a women’s right NGO that promotes women’s social, political, economic and cultural rights in The Gambia.

Among their objectives are to carry out researches into traditional practices that affect the sexual and reproductive health of women and girl child in The Gambia. She said Gamcotraps aims to identify and promote traditional practices that improve the status of the girl-child, and also to create awareness, particularly on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), nutritional taboos, early child marriages and inheritance.

For his Part, Kunkung Jobarteh, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Department of State for Basic and Secondary Education, who delivered the keynote address, on behalf of his Secretary of State, said the long-standing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Gamcotrap and DoSE should be reviewed with a view to accommodate the current thinking and mandates of both institutions. “This will also help to forge stronger partnership between our institutions for the benefit of all the actors in the process,” he concluded.