Four Gambian CSOs Raise Over $ 30,000 in 2022
[Accra- 31 January 2023]- Four civil society organisations (CSOs) in The Gambia have seen incredible results following their participation in a local fundraising training facilitated by the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI).
The organisations, Household Disaster Resilience Project (HELP-Gambia) and Gambia Rural Poor Association (GAMRUPA) have been able to locally raise $13,000 and $11,000 respectively to support their projects following their participation in the training in 2019.
The others, Support Activists Foundation (SAF) and Raise the Young Foundation (RYF) have also been able to mobilise $11,000 and $1,300 respectively by applying the skills acquired through the training.
Dawda Cham, Executive Director of HELP-Gambia expressed excitement at the impact the training has had on the organisation.
Cham was speaking with WACSI’s communication team in The Gambia on 6 December 2022, on the sidelines of a five-day on-site coaching session for fifteen Wilde Ganzen partners who had already gone through similar training.
“Hitherto participating in the training, one of the major challenges the organisation faced was the inability to effectively mobilise funds locally,” he recounted.
However, according to him, the donor mapping technique, one of the modules in the training courses has been helpful in their local fundraising efforts.
“We used the technique to raise over GMD 800,000 ($13,000) locally to support the Trash Free Gambia project in four major regions. ” he said.
This is a groundbreaking initiative in the country which is contributing to address the quandary of indiscriminate waste dumping and the lack of proper waste management in the country.,
For GAMRUPA’s Founder, Kalifa Kanteh, being able to raise $11,000 within the organisation to support four business ventures is such an outstanding feat for the organisation.
“We have truly benefited from this training. We are grateful to WACSI and the funders,” he added.
While GAMRUPA is utilising the funds raised to scale up businesses in the country, SAF is capitalising on the resources raised to take steps to further guarantee its insitution’s sustainability.
SAF has been able to acquire two plots of land to support the cause of the organisation through application of the skills they acquired, Executive Director, Solomon Correa testified.
“We applied the techniques WACSI taught us, and we have been able to acquire two plots of land amounting to $11,000”, he added.
WACSI has been facilitating local fundraising trainings under the Wilde Ganzen’s Change the Game Academy initiative since 2018. Over 300 individuals from 161 CSOs in Ghana, The Gambia and Sierra Leone have benefited from the workshops.
These experiences by CSOs in The Gambia provide deeper assurances to CSOs in other West African countries that if well applied, local fundraising techniques can yield lasting results. This can enable CSOs to generate the resources needed to champion different development initiatives in their respective countries.
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