Help Me To Make To Make A Difference - Marion's Story
And so she did. With no experience of the African continent, or even of construction, Marion set about raising the funds to enable her promise to the boys.
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The Scout centre, Kaira Konko, meaning "Hill of Peace" was completed in 1998 and has, since then been a thriving Scout centre and lodge accommodation to people of The Gambia, as well as international travellers, Scouts and school groups.
Since its opening, funds raised by the lodge, along with charitable donations, have been invested in various community projects; recent initiatives include feeding Soma’s poorest families, sponsoring local children through school and into Higher education, providing a safe water supply for the area and rebuilding homes stricken by poverty.
The Kaiaf Health Centre serves a large rural area of the Lower River Region of The Gambia; with support from UK sponsors and Kaira Konko, the centre is undergoing a much-needed renovation and expansion programme. The centre began as a one-room facility but has grown, in line with community awareness and patient demand.
In The Gambia, childbirth brings considerable risk to life and, this Spring, Kaira Konko are on a mission to vastly improve maternity services in the area.
This is the main maternity room of the Kaiaf Health Centre.
As someone who gave birth in a very comfortable midwife-run facility in Petersfield, it's hard to recognise the Kaiaf Health Centre as a modern birthing place and, whilst the dedicated nursing team there work tirelessly to improve maternity conditions, and the renovations being made are making a huge difference, it's still a very far stretch from the sort of medical facilities we're privileged enough to have here in the UK.
The health centre wants to raise funds to buy solar batteries, so that they can bring light and basic comfort to the maternity ward, throughout the night. Marion told me how women in labour had to pay for the use of a ceiling fan - something they were just totally unable to afford - and that lack of electricity in the centre also sees babies regularly being delivered by nothing more than the light of a hand-held torch.
In Soma, women need to provide their own sanitary towels, soap, surgical stitches, any and all medication, food and washing buckets as part of their after-care treatment: an impossible task for many local women.
So, members of the Kaira Konko team are assembling and distributing maternity kits, made up in buckets, which include these things that they need to be safely delivered and, with which to look after themselves following the birth of their babies; really simple maternity basics that I, for one, took for granted when I had my son here in Hampshire.
Marion, and the Kaira Konko team are dedicated to expanding the maternity care provision in Soma and ensuring that local, expectant mothers have access to good health care facilities at every stage of their motherhood journeys.
Kaira Konko is supporting women to bring new life safely into the world, but they can only do so with the support of people like you and I.
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So, I'm reaching out to you, and to all your friends and family in turn, to help me help these women in The Gambia. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the maternity conditions they live in; as a mum my myself, it really got to me, to all the girls in shop, in fact - and we all knew, right away, that I had to tell Marion's story to you, to my ClobR ladies.
If you'd like to support the work that Kaira Konko is doing in The Gambia to promote safe and hygienic maternity care, then you can give, whatever you are able to, via KindLink on the charity's website:
