The team are now back from their recent visit to The Gambia and can report that arrangements for the official opening ceremony on 21 September have now been finalised. There was a lot to do in a very short time with the team only being there for one week, but with each member of the team being designated specific tasks all objectives were achieved.

Although the team had expected problems with teacher interviews and selection they were indebted to their local advisor Mr Drammeh principle from the SOS schools project who assisted with interviews and advised on selection. One teacher Bakering Ceesay will transfer over from an unregistered nursery school in the village and he will be joined by Mrs Sambou another teacher and Mrs Jallow, the latter having much more experience and will therefore become head teacher and school administrator. The three of them together with Mr Drammeh will meet from time to time over the coming weeks to draw up draft teaching processes and curriculum, they will all start full time on 1 September when their objective will be to make sure everything is in place for official opening on 21 September.

Whilst the team were there they also oversaw the arrival of another container from the UK, this seemed to go a lot smoother on this occasion due to the experience gained earlier in the year and a change of local shipping agent. From Banjul port to the charity shop and unloaded in all took only four hours. The following day was spent sorting donated items into some sort of saleable order thereafter the shop was open for business again leaving the team two days to monitor before returning to the UK.

As we reported following our April visit the build schedule is well on target with just the toilet block to complete and a complete tidy of the site remaining, we also now have an electric supply which will assist the teachers in preparing for the opening ceremony.

The team expect to travel out again 3 days before the official opening to assist with final preparations.

100% of all BASIG donations go to towards the building and running costs of the school, no profit generated or donated is spent on charity administration or travel costs, we thank all of our sponsors who have helped the project to evolve thus far.