The Gambia

Lamin Fatty is the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL) Focal Point for Tostan the Gambia. He trains the community-based facilitators and community management committees CMCs and facilitates the implementation of the community empowerment program modules. He also coordinates the organized diffusion and leads mini and public declaration to abandon the practice of child marriage and female genital cutting FGC. Fatty hosts a weekly, local language, radio show at the Gambia Radio and Television Service GRTS in Basse. He has co-facilitated a training on Islam and Human Rights for religious leaders at the Tostan Training Center in Thiés, Senegal. He has worked for Tostan for more than 14 years, previously as a Program Field Supervisor and over seven years as MERL focal point. He received an Associate degree in Development Studies from the Rural Development Training Institue and a National Certificate in Integrated Rural Development. He researched water resources conservation swampland ecosystem production and the impact of the closure of a state-owned Gambia Cotton Company on the lives and livelihoods of the cotton farmers and former employees in the Central River Region and the Upper River Region. Fatty also works as a freelance journalist with the newspaper Foroyaa.

Fatoumatta Singhateh works with the Gambian Ministry of Health as a WASH Program Officer. As a national trainer and facilitator for both the Community-Led Total Sanitation and Social and Behavioral Change Communication, she trained a number of health workers and village support groups on sanitation improvements, behavioral change, and communication skills. Fatoumatta coordinates and implements several radio and television panel discussion programs on maternal and child health nutrition as well as sanitation. Her contribution led to the decline of open defecation practices from four percent to less than one percent. She is passionate about helping girls in low income families and thus engaged two hundred children at school to learn about menstrual hygiene management, career counseling, and motivational training. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Development Studies, a higher national diploma in public and environmental health, and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in International Public Health at Euclid University.