The main part of the debate has started with discussion and decisions about three of the villages top priority bids:
Jiroff
The first bid is for funding the furnishing of the health centre. This project has been really impressive over the last few years and is pretty well finished, but the village now want to furnish it with beds. We have been funding over the last three years to a total of over £8000 so the Jiroff group presented this as the logical continuation of the project. Without this, the health centre will be a white elephant. There are two part-time nurses at present and there are always staff present. There are also drugs in the health centre so furnishing now seems essential. This is never intended to be a major health centre like Kwinella, Kaiaf or Kolior. Instead this is a first aid station where people are treated or triaged if they need to be to a bigger centre.
The students agreed to fund this for £875
Kolior
The villagers are bidding for the fourth stage of funding of their health centre. This is a far larger project than Jiroff- a health centre which will be the biggest that Beacon has ever supported when finished. We funded £4000 last year to pay for the windows, roof and floor, but now they want to pay for a three year plan to finish it. They have already 200 patients a month and 18 villages rely on it for care. When finished, they will have capacity for 500 a month so this will be a support for much of our area. Once it is finished, the Gambian government have committed to support with drugs and staff, but at present, even though it is already up and running, no support comes to them because it is policy for the government not to fund unfinished centres. There would have been a strong argument to try to fund more this year, but the students felt it was already a large pull on our funds hence the three year timescale. Kolior are also a very proactive village who attract funding from other international charities and even do small scale fundraising activities themselves.
The students agreed that this was too big a proposal to decide yet and that we would return to it later once we had more a sense of what money is left- once we had finished discussion all of the first village bids, we returned to the bid and agreed it.
The students agreed to fund this at £2588
Dumbutu
The villagers are bidding for the replacement for of their roof in their school. This roof currently leaks heavily during the rainy season destroying stores, damaging teaching materials and disrupting learning as pupils have to be sent home whenever it rains. Last year the village had actually requested the same project, but at that point, the group did not feel comfortable supporting it as this was a new village for us and we did not then feel comfortable supporting something so large until we could tell how reliable they were. This year we have seen that they have been highly trustworthy in using the money we did assign to them last year. The project is expensive, but this would be a sustainable roof which would last longer because the mahogany supports they are asking for are more resistant to termites. They know that the kind of roof they are requesting is long lasting because the one they are replacing has lasted since the 1980s. The students had also been asked to fund new doors for the buildings, but it was proposed that we voted to fund the roof without the doors which the villages had also suggested might be a suitable compromise
The students agreed to fund this without the doors for £2053
Beacon in the Gambia 