The Gambia

Jarra Darboe has thirteen years of experience in administration and finance at Tostan Gambia. She holds an advanced diploma in Business Management Studies from the Gambia Technical Training Institute. She has developed annual project budgets, financial reporting, budget management, and managerial competences. Jarra’s work at Tostan focuses on empowering communities to develop and implement their vision for the future. Tostan’s transformative education program and the community empowerment programs have reached tens of thousands of participants in the Gambia. Her efforts alongside her team have supported a wide range of community-led impacts in education and beyond, including health, economic empowerment, environment, local governance and women empowerment.

Edrisa Keita is from Sukuta in the West Coast Region of the Gambia. For the past five years, he has been the National Coordinator of Tostan Gambia, after five years of previous experience working with the organization as a partner and Assistant National Coordinator. He holds a postgraduate degree in Population and Development Studies at the University of the Gambia. He has also completed training in Entrepreneurship and Promotion of Income Generating Activities at The National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development in Uttar Pradesh, India. He holds a Professional Training Certificate in Project Planning, Management, and Evaluation from the Pan African Institute for Development West Africa; and a certificate in Business Management and Administration from the Institute of Commercial Management from the Nusrat Commercial Management Center. Before his current role at Tostan, he held positions as a teacher, an Accounts Clerk in the Ministry of Finance, a Regional Programme Officer at the National Women’s Bureau, a member of the Gender Action Team and Technical Advisory Committee, and a Chairperson in the Gambia Red Cross Society. He has also participated in development platforms with different agencies: the UN Development Assistance Framework for the Gambia (UNDAF) working group, the National Gender and Women Empowerment Survey, and the development process of the National Women’s Act of 2010.

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.