Tashawna S Bethea, political and economic officer at the United States Embassy in Banjul, has commended the Youths and Women of Mandinaba for the successes they have been registering in Kombo East, in collaboration with the US Peace Corps Volunteers.

Mrs Bethea also promised the US embassy and the US Peace Corps office's continued commitment towards supporting the community based projects and initiatives in the areas of skills development.

Mrs Bethea was speaking, yesterday, at the Mandinaba Community Library, while on a tour of projects initiated by the US Peace Corps volunteers. According to her, Peace Corps are very important in African societies, adding that they focus on developing the capacity of the local people.

Mr Kawsu Sanno, chairperson of the Mandinaba Youth and Sports Committee, said the ‘Nafaa for All Initiative’ is a project that was initiated by his committee, in collaboration with a Peace Corps volunteer, Lesley Copeland. He added that the project is in three phases, one of which was the establishment of the library.

According to him, the library project as the first phase is currently playing a pivotal role in empowerment and enhancing of sustainable quality education.

Mrs Kaddy Sanyang, chairperson of the Mandinaba Women Recycling Group (a group that engages in recycling waste plastic bags into valuable materials like bags and wallets) said Lesley Copeland, a Peace Corps volunteer in the village, initiated the group. According to her, they were trained by one Isatou Ceesay, a Peace Corps consultant who taught them how to recycle the waste plastic bags.

“With only sixteen members at first, we quickly understood the techniques used in the skills within a week,” Mrs Sanyang said. She then pointed out some constraints faced by her group, including the issue of a meeting ground and suggested the possibility of having a skills training centre.

For his part, Mr Ousman Bah, Wings of the Dawn representative in The Gambia, said that his organization is a charitable organisation based in Forth Worth, Texas, in the US. According to him, Wings of the Dawn aims at improving the level of education in African countries like The Gambia, Nigeria and Mozambique.

He went on to say that the organisation signed a memorandum of understanding with the Mandinaba Youth and Sports committee in 2007, and that since then they have donated two consignments of books to the Mandinaba community library. He said that those books have benefited almost all the Lower and Upper Basic schools in Kombo East.

Ousman Manneh, the library assistant at the Mandinaba Community Library said:  “Since the establishment of the library, it has been playing a pivotal role in the development of the schools in the area, by improving the reading standards of the students.”

According to him, the library has contributed in raising the rate of passes in examinations among students. He further pointed out that the library used to offer classes for students and organised fora for them to discuss burning issues like teenage pregnancy, the reasons for students failing their exams, and drug and alcohol abuse, which are the major problems in our society.