Ceesay Nursery and Primary School is a small charity run entirely by unpaid volunteers and fundraisers in the UK and Europe, with support from a small team of paid staff in the Gambia. Our HMRC charity reference number is XT31251 and our registered UK address is 46 Dartmouth Park Hill, NW5 1HN London.
We help poor and orphaned Gambian kids to go to school.
We do this by means of our three-part programme:
1. Ceesay Nursery School, in Mandinari, The Gambia (soon to be renamed Nyoodeyma Nursery School) was built by our charity on land we purchased in 2017, to replace previously rented and totally unsuitable school premises. We aim to provide crucial Early Years education, family health education, women’s enterprise support and a nutritious daily meal to some of the poorest, orphaned children and their families in the Gambia, West Africa.
2. In parallel, we find and match UK and European educational sponsors for carefully selected and screened children and support their education right up to their completion of Upper Basic School. In some cases, sponsors have generously chosen to support their sponsored child through Higher Education and even to degree level.
With robust safeguarding policies and procedures in place and regular reporting, we encourage sponsors and their sponsored children to form bonds of professional friendship, mutual respect and understanding. Usually once a year, we lead a trip to the Gambia where sponsors have the opportunity to experience the rich Gambian culture, meet their sponsored child and family in a supervised way and visit their school. We find this is the best way to showcase the incredible impact sponsoring a child’s education has on improving their quality of life.
3. We are aiming to develop the Nyoodeyma Foundation, which is our Gambian based and Gambian run sister charity, in order to totally hand over the day to day operating of these initiatives to committed and professional Gambians.
Our story
In December 2006, Diane Fisher, a teacher, travelled to the Gambia as a volunteer assessor for another charity that worked there. While there, Diane was told about a small, struggling nursery school that really needed school supplies. In April 2007, Diane returned to the Gambia and visited that school, so beginning a supportive relationship with Gambian Early Childhood Education, that continues today.
In 2011 we registered as a small charity with HMRC in the UK. Our aims included helping some of the poorest children in the neighbourhood around where we eventually built our community nursey school, to access educational opportunities. We wanted to support orphans and children whose parents could not afford school fees, to be able to access the crucial preparatory step of being able to go to attend nursery school.
Why is this important?
In nursery school, children learn how to count, learn the alphabet, spell and speak some English. They learn to hold a pencil and to enjoy learning. Gambian children come from 8 major ethnic groups and so speak a variety of local languages at home, but the state Lower and Upper Basic curriculum is delivered exclusively in English. Without crucial early childhood education, a child will enter a classroom for only half a day, with up to 70 children and possibly only one (untrained) teacher and will have very limited chances of learning anything.
The result of this failure in education, is only too obvious in a population where many just cannot access even the limited opportunities that may be available, especially women. The desperation of generational poverty, compounded now by climate change and the current war in the Ukraine, leads to all manner of horrific consequences. In the Gambia, for young girls, this translates into child marriages, illegal FGM and prostitution to literally survive. In the UK and Europe, we see with our own eyes the tragedies of young migrants drowned at sea, as they try somehow, to seek a better life by making a desperate bid to come to Europe.
We aim to address some of the root causes of these human tragedies and suffering. We invite you to join us.
The School
The Gambian Team
Momodou Jallow, Project Manager
Momodou is responsible for the overall management of Ceesay Nursery & Primary School Charity work in the Gambia. Momodou collects money sent from the UK, communicates, sometime daily, with Diane, pays other staff including tradesmen and keeps good records and receipts. He visits the school weekly to ensure it stays in good repair and he accompanies the Sponsorship Manager when she delivers the sponsorship monies to the children and their families. He has worked for us since early 2017 and was responsible for the management and overall success of the school building project, along with the Junior Project Manager of the time, Gabriel Mendy. Momodou is a hard-working family man with one daughter and one son and a lovely wife, Mala, an amazing cook who always welcomes our UK team into her home whenever we visit.
Fatoumata Jallow, Sponsorship Manager
Fatou is responsible for looking after the wellbeing and overseeing the education of our sponsored children. She collects school reports and sends them to Diane, to deliver to sponsors. She and Momodou deliver sponsorship monies to families and to pay school fees. She visits the schools as necessary and is a strong local advocate for all our sponsored children, especially valuable to the girls, as they enter puberty, a very challenging time for Gambian girls. Fatou started working for us as a translator in 2017, helping us to speak to and understand the needs of sponsored children and their families, who mostly do not speak much English until they have been to school. She worked so hard and was so good at this role that we have employed her in a more secure position since 2018.
Adama Ceesay, Head Classroom Teacher
Adama is Ceesay Nursery School’s main classroom teacher, having worked in our school since 2012. She was sponsored by our charity to enrol in a professional Early Child Development Teacher Training Course in 2013, studying at Gambia College in Brikama. Adama successfully graduated in July 2016. She is a talented and committed teacher and also currently organises and administers our Free Breakfast programme for the nursery school children. She has previously led on the Community Women’s Enterprise Projects.
Mai Colley
Mai is the very hard-working school cook/cleaner who was voted into her current permanent job by the community’s women. She is a widow and is totally committed to her work in our school.
Gabriel Mendy
Gabriel is a Volunteer Sponsorship Ambassador, University of the Gambia Graduate and now Secondary School Maths Teacher. Gabriel is a wonderful example of how education and sponsorship can change a child’s life for the better. His sponsorship started in 2007 and in January 2022 he graduated with Honours, with a degree in Maths and Higher Maths. In 2017, during a gap year, our charity employed him for one year as Junior Project Manager, to work with Momodou to help build the school and report back to Diane on a weekly basis, with all quotes and expenditures. His commitment to helping other poor Gambians have access to educational opportunities is unequalled and without his consistent hard work, superb negotiating and bargaining skills and his excellent daily operational management skills our school would never have been built within budget and to such a high standard. He continues to serve as an inspiration and role model to all our sponsored children.
The UK and European Volunteer Team
Diane Fisher, Chair of Steering Group
Diane is the founder and driving force for our charity. She is responsible for leading the vision and direction for the Ceesay Nursery and Primary School charity’s project development. She is responsible for the day-to-day charity administration, fundraising and recruitment. She brings her experience of living, working and teaching in West Africa and is a qualified teacher and teacher trainer with extensive experience as a project manager. She is now semi-retired (2022) and is able to devote more of her time to the charity. Diane travels to the Gambia regularly and is in regular contact with the members of the Gambian team and the UK/European team, as well as all our friends, supporters, sponsors and stakeholders.
Stuart Sweeney
After careers in Maths teaching and corporate banking, Stuart became a dance critic and in 2004 accepted the invitation to become a member of the Dance section of the Critics’ Circle. Currently, alongside his role as a member of the Ceesay Steering Group, he is Chair of the Brunswick Centre Leaseholders’ Assn., a recent Chair of the Sonnenberg Assn., an international friendship society, and General Secretary of the Central London Table Tennis. Stuart has been very active travelling out to the Gambia on several occasions and supporting the charity in a variety of invaluable ways.
Isolde Hartung
A German member of our Steering Group, Isolde worked for many years as in professional positions including in financial management and as a team leader in various companies and in a bank. She has family in Austria and Swiss and friends in many countries. Isolde enjoys traveling, sometimes as a tourist and sometimes doing volunteer work behind the scenes. She’s engaged in helping refugees and also children in The Gambia. She has travelled out to the Gambia on several occasions to help with our work out there. She’s also a member of the board for “International House Sonnenberg” which offers political education for adults and young people. In her free time, she’s a senior student, reads a lot and enjoys hiking in nature, visiting the theatre, concerts and opera and meetings friends for discussions, dancing and laughing.
Jacob Fisher
Jacob has spent 12 years studying in Buddhist academic institutions. He then completed a Masters degree and is now in the process of completing a PhD in the University of Oxford. Jacob has been on the Steering Committee for the last two years.
Mala Jallow
Mala is a Gambian friend of Diane’s who lives in London. She advises the steering group on various aspects of Gambian life and culture and provides delicious Gambian food at meetings and fundraising events run by the charity in London. She acts as ambassador for the school amongst fellow Gambians and westerners, having experience of both cultures.
Andrew Mendy
Andrew is another Gambian friend of the charity. He works for another UK charity that supports children in Africa. He also gives us much invaluable advice.
Vrushik Pradip & Tim Wan
Vrushik & Tim are professional backend developers and help the charity maintain and edit the Ceesay School website and other technology solutions held by the charity.
Ceesay Nursery School 