Activista! The Gambia
Activista is a network of young people and students across rich and poor countries connected to ActionAid. We work to affect the political processes influencing young people by running political campaigns, with our current campaign being HungerFREE. In this we seek to understand and highlight the causes of hunger and the network provides a unique opportunity for youth to engage in local and global change making. In The Gambia, Activista is merged with the national chapter of African Youth Coalition against Hunger, and was started as a pilot project in 2008, and work under the guidance and support of ActionAid International The Gambia (AAITG). Activista the Gambia has grown massively within the years, and now encompasses approximately 2500 youths, and is present in more than 32 schools across all seven regions in the Gambia. We have gone from being a pilot project, mainly working from event to event, to being a campaign organisation working on long term political aims. There has been a need to develop a long term plan for Activista’s activities in the Gambia, in order to manifest our position as an important youth network, and policy influencer. This is why we are creating a strategy for Activista the Gambia for 2012-2015. We look after our funds by having a trained accountant assistant who uses standard accounting system. We are organised with a 8 member board who are elected by congress to serve for three years. To communicate internally and with our members we hold quarterly board meetings, an Annual General Meeting and a congress every three years. We build our capacity by attending trainings in advocacy, campaigning, social media, leadership, women right issues, blogging, accountability and empowerment with ActionAid and Activista International. We belong to the International Food Security Network in The Gambia and Activista international to collaborate and exchange ideas about matters that affect our work and membership. We engage with government: Activista has registered with the Attorney Generals Chambers and the National Youth Council. We are a member of Actionaid International The Gambia general membership and Pro Poor Advocacy Group. We We are part of EU-NSASP network members. |
Campaign and advocate against poverty and efficiently seeking to address the cause and consequences of the poverty relief situation in which many Gambians are suffering from, by mobilizing young people to take charge of their destiny and shape the future of our country. • Empower and enable young people to actively participate in decision making and political processes that affect our lives, and build our capacities to create social change for sustainable development, thus significantly improving ActionAid’s efforts to end poverty. • Build Activista the Gambia as a diverse youth friendly movement that creates a sustainable platform for young people to realise and have solutions to our problems, by working with partners locally and globally. The objectives are the specific pillars of work that Activista will be focusing on for the next three years. For each objective several outputs are created. They are meant to be the promises that we make to ourselves and our stakeholders that we will concretely work to achieve before the end of 2015. They also form the concrete backdrop for the development of our yearly action plans. Campaigning Objective: To engage young people to advocate and campaign locally, regionally, and globally to influence policies and political processes that affect our lives. Capacity building Objective: To capacitise and enable youth to participate effectively in decision making and democratisation processes to transform our lives, and to be part of creating an effective Activista organisation. Organisational development Objective: To develop a sustainable and effective Activista organisation that is able to reach out to and capacitise its members, and conduct effective campaigns. Shared learning Objective: To create a social platform for young people to exchange ideas and capacitise members to become mutually inspired, within Activista the Gambia and sister Activista countries, thus creating social change at individual, community and national levels. |
CONTACT US
Activista The Gambia
MDI Road, Kanifing
C/O PMB 450 Serrekunda, The Gambia
Tel: (220)4392244/ 9884761
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.actionaid.org/activista