☀️ In July 2025 I will be travelling to Gunjur in The Gambia with a volunteer team to work with the local community rebuilding their hospital.
🏥 The community of 25,000 has its health needs met by a small local medical centre. Due to the decline in the condition of the hospital's small accommodation units, no members of staff remain on- site outside of normal working hours. This means that it is difficult for the local community to access health care out of hours and medical staff need to commute each day to the hospital.
🦠 The covid pandemic meant that essential planned work was delayed and now is critical.
🩺 Working together with a group of local community volunteers, we will work to refurbish the accommodation units, allowing staff to remain at work and care for patients during the night.
🛠 My tasks will include mixing cement, screeding walls, concreting floors, making bricks and painting walls.
⛺️ Our accommodation will be very basic, we’re not expecting beds or showers 🫣 and we’ll be food shopping at the markets and making our meals alongside our local new friends.
🏝 I’ll also get the opportunity to see a bit of the country, including learning about it’s history with the slave trade.
🐢 We will meet a volunteer group that protect and release sea turtles, and some local young people who have developed a process to collect and recycle single use plastic to help deal with the pollution problem.
♻️ We will also take part in a beach clean day, collecting plastic for the recycling plant.
🙏 Thank you so much for reading this, and I’m so grateful for every donation no matter how small, to help me raise funds for this trip.
Emily x 🥰