Last year I visited Gambia with Crowborough's Beacon Academy Sixth Form's Gambia project. (Learn more about the Gambia trip)

Within small groups, we visited nearby villages who were asking for funding for local individual projects including: medication for area health centres, fencing to protect crops from animals, fencing to go around toilets to enable them to apply for the World Food Programme, paying for 2 students to go to university, water pumps for a whole village, water pump for a school, staff quarters for a school, village milling machine, solar batteries for staff quarters at a school and building a pharmacy, amongst many others. Beacon Academy's total funding raised by the school and pupils last year was £38,000. This enabled some of the funding requests listed above to be fulfilled.

I will be returning this year in December 2018. I will be able to see how much progress has been made on these projects and will hear new requests for funding for new schemes.

Everyone who goes to Gambia with Beacon is tasked with raising £500 minimum to go towards the total amount raised.

Over the remaining months to December I will be having my hair cut off (not shaved!) to above shoulder length - see above (my hair will be sent to a children's charity which makes wigs for children who have suffered hair loss due to life-threatening illnesses). I will be selling home-made goods at local village and school fetes and hope to organise at least one event such as a quiz-night.

All the money raised goes towards the Gambia project total taken by Crowborough Beacon Academy to fund projects brought to the school for funding in December 2018.