Entrepreneur Community Online: Children in Africa - The Gambia Project by @KekutahJarrah

Editor's Note:

Children in Africa - The Gambia Project is spearheaded by ECO Teammate Kekutah Jarrah. He will be writing a series on the problems and solutions to this project. We encourage you to send us your input, feedback and connections to get this project kicked off.

By Kekutah Jarrah:

Part 1: The problem

There have been traditional systems in place to take care of children who lose their parents for various reasons in the Gambia. But the onslaught of HIV slowly but surely erodes this good traditional practice by simply overloading its caring capacity by the sheer number of orphaned children needing support and care. Children including those with HIV also undermines the caring capacity of families and communities by deepening poverty due to loss of labour and the high cost of medical treatment and funerals.

Keeping orphans in school is crucial to their futures. While primary education is basically more harder. many orphans are not in school due to extended family not being interested in educating them no matter how brainly you are, or able to afford other school fees.

There has to be a Herculean effort made for these kids so we don’t lose them. And that is what I’m led to do.

Otherwise we will have a society where kids haven’t been to school and turn out to be bandits, Out law boys, drug addits, and even lead some to terrifying habbits by becoming wild. These are angers that lead them to something that they don’t want, but since they are desperate not having anything useful to do with their lives, they will go out and do what ever it takes to keep them selves. A society where a large proportion can have anti-social instincts because their lives have been so hard. You have a generation of children who will be more vulnerable to exploitation and to disease because they won’t have the same sense of self-worth.