Launching of Gunjur Development Association Keynote Speech: October 2017
Gunjur has been in the forefront of many of our national development initiatives since before The of Gambia attained its sovereignty. We
have seen this with the involvement of the late Alhagi Famara Wassa Touray as our prominent citizen of Gunjur along with other leaders secured Gambia’s independence from Great Britain. Today, Gunjur is a well-known coastal fishing community in The Gambia and the headquarters of the Kombo South district. It has been linked with Marlborough in Wiltshire, United Kingdom Great Britain in 1981 to encourage linking of the people through Dialogue and Understanding between North and South.
Today, we are here to celebrate the launching of Gunjur Development Association; a new organization followed The Gunjur Development Fund. At the inception of Gunjur Development Fund in 2000/2001, our main focus was to help our community in areas we felt were crucial to the Socio-Economic development of our people locally. At that time some of the projects we embarked on were the following:.
*Renovation/Upgrade of the Gunjur Central Mosque.
* Fencing of the Nyamina Soccer field.
* Road Rehabilitation.
* Purchase of a funeral van for the community of Gunjur.
* Milling Machine at the Co-operative to help Village from pounding their cereal produce.
* Installation of a Water pump for the provision of clean water to the community.
*A cyber café was constructed but was unfortunately burnt down before being put into use.
* Provision of two metal coffins that are stationed at the RVH mortuary in Banjul to help in the transportation for the deceased.
*Support of a summer support program.
* Academic Excellence Awards to outstanding students.
* Sponsorship classroom blocks at Khalid Bun Walid School, spearheaded by Lamin O. Bojang residing in The United States.
* Provision of funds for Village Gamo and a cash donation towards the resettlement of JOJ to The Gambia from Malaysia.
Today, with the changing nature and developmental needs of our community, the role of Gunjur Development Fund has taken new dimensions that culminated in the formation of Gunjur Development Association. (GDA) in May 2017. It is formed by people of Gunjur and Gunjur citizens in the Diaspora. Membership of the Organization is open to all citizens of Gunjur and friends of Gunjur. The organization's support and source of income cash or in kind is through membership contributions most of which comes from the Gunjur community in the diaspora. This organization aims to address social and environmental development issues and agenda within Gunjur that may span to other parts of the district.
Gunjur Development Association is a non-partisan organization and we are here to work with The Gambia government as well as the local authorities in whatever role we can play to develop, protect Gunjur from negative human activities such as deforestation, environmental degradation by individuals, domestic and foreign companies. We strongly advocate for the preservation, protection and development of the coastline from Kartong to Banjul that will immensely contribute to the growth of Tourism in The Gambia. As we all know the Tourism sector for The Gambia accounts for the 20% pre Ebola scare (2014) of our national GDP. Gunjur Development Association’s mission is to strive to bring all cultural and ethnic groups in Gunjur together without regard to ethnicity, political affiliation, or religion. We shall act as a development agent for Gunjur community and to work in partnership with the Village Development Committee (VDC) and the entire community to supplement the government and other Non-Governmental Organizations to development efforts.
Our aim is to promote and foster unity among the people of Gunjur and promote and enhance human capital, material and natural resources of Gunjur for the Socio-economic as well as educational advancement of Gunjur. We want to partake in all investment decisions making processes and activities to act as an advocate for Gunjur an effort to promote and preserve our culture, customs, languages and traditions of the people of Gunjur. In this process, we envision to cooperate and liaise with the government and other organizations with similar objectives involving self-help projects and public sensitization exercises, educational or extracurricular activities such as debates, seminars, traditional and cultural shows, sports etc. Some of these activities will be used as a means of revenue generation to help the organization to realize some of its objectives of self-reliance like self-employment, self –development , promotion of personal responsibility, high ethical and moral values to help realizes each person’s potential. While we strongly believe in self-help, governmental, donor agencies, NGOs assistance will always be welcomed to supplant our collective efforts of fostering development in our community.
As we embark on this new development partnership, we want to inform this gathering of a successful tree planting exercise we embarked on in collaboration with The Geology Department in an effort to repair the damage of sand mining around some parts of our coastline has caused. Through a massive outpouring of support the community in Gunjur with help from the Gunjur community in the diaspora, a total of 11,500 thousand plants were planted. We also raised over One Hundred and Fifteen Thousand Dalasis that will be used towards to refurbishment of the equipment at the Gunjur Health Center in the coming weeks and months. As we move on with these projects, we are asking for full support from the community, local authorities and the 4
Central government. We are thanking our guests who traveled all the way to Gunjur to attend this event. On behalf of the entire membership of Gunjur Development Association,
THANK YOU.
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