BACKGROUND TO THE YATE-GENIERI LINK
Genieri is a village almost 100 miles from the coast in the West African republic of The Gambia.
The first contact between Yate and The Gambia was in 1986 when a group of sixth formers from Brimsham Green Secondary School in Yate, together with four members of staff and Canon Grant, then the Rector of Yate, went to the country to carry out a survey on subsistence levels. The following year the link between Yate and Genieri was formed, and committees were set up in the two communities with the help of Margaret Haswell MBE who had close connections with Genieri, having been stationed there in 1947.
BENEFITS TO CHILDREN IN GENIERI AND YATE
Many individuals from the committee in Yate have been to Genieri to meet villagers, form friendships and take part in projects started jointly with their counterparts in Genieri.
Fund raising has enabled members of the committee to take items to Genieri and work with the villagers, including buying materials, to maintain and furnish a Day Care Centre for pre-school children in the village. The main structure of the centre is now finished and furnished. Projects in connection with the Day Care Centre include plastering the walls and making a concrete base for the play area.
Individuals and organisations in Yate have contributed items such as footballs and football kit for the village's very successful team. Most recently BristolRocks.co.uk contributed money for football nets.
Yate-Genieri Link has paid for leaders of the village, in particular the teachers from the Day Care Centre to visit Yate. All of them have been to local schools where they have helped to give children a vivid picture of life in Africa and learned ways in which they can improve their work in Genieri.
In 1994 two young people, Anne Bryer and Gareth Hunt from Yate, spent nine months in Genieri funded by the Link, working in local schools and giving individual tuition to young people in the village.
As a result of on-going fund raising activities the Yate Committee now pays the salary of two teachers in the Day Care Centre in the village.
The Yate Genieri Link was granted Charitable Status by the Charities Commission in 1996.
SELF-SUSTAINING PROJECTS
Most of the projects the Link undertakes will eventually become self-sustaining and it was with this in mind that, in 1999, the organisation funded the sinking of three new wells to enable a set of vegetable allotments to be established a short distance from Genieri at a cost of approximately £3,500. The allotments are organised and tended by the women of the village, the aim being to help supplement the diet of the village.
By 2002 the women's garden project was extended and was so productive that the Link commissioned the building of a market stall where vegetables could be sold to travellers on the road through Genieri and to other villagers.
The Link has always kept the village's Primary Health Care Centre stocked with supplies of simple medicines and now pays a salary to the Centre manager. In an extension of this work, bednets have been bought for the entire village in a bid to eradicate malaria. To date, after four years, instances of the disease have been significantly reduced.
A small fleet of simple fishing boats has been commissioned from local boat builders and the fish caught are sold on the market stall, helping contribute to the economic welfare of Genieri. The purchase of the boats was achieved in conjunction with fund raising events held in various Yate schools and with a donation from Yate's twin town in Germany, Bad Salzdetfurth.
Recently honey production was introduced to the village using simple hives which are made locally in The Gambia. The hives are now productive and several 'harvests' have earned a small profit for the village.