Chance For All in an African Magical Classroom

The Spirit of sharing is a great life lesson, a great moment of friendship and fun.

In these tough economic times, Associations around Saint-Louis town are facing many challenges, due to the pandemic. Of course, it is understandable that donors are facing hard times in their country but, they never forget Senegal and little kids. 

There is an old saying that: ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’ and that proverb makes sense nowadays. In fact; many organizations, agencies or institutions are receiving help and support from their government or foreign NGOs, except local Associations in Saint-Louis.

Sometimes you need to know a distinguished politician in order to get a grant. Unfortunately, we don’t know ways to apply for subsidy, which is quite sad or unfair, but that’s our daily life.

 Luckily, we have longlife friends living far from Senegal, but having their heart and soul with us. They always worry about children situation and associations members. They kept calling us from time to time to have an update regarding the current situation of street children. For example, how they are surviving in these times? How can they have good food? How they can be treated if they are sick or injured?

 Despite the fact that those donors are also vulnerable and are confronted with the pandemic, lockdown, job loss, anxiety, safety distance, injections and so on. They still have time to think about us to undertake actions in order to rescue us.

For that purpose, they sent us money to support our activities in Saint-Louis and allowed us to organize a great program of Meals sharing and distribution. Of course in Africa, eating is one of the greatest pleasures of life. Sharing and enjoying meals with people, friends or family is a special time.

 That’s why we decided to do it with talibés and kids in neighborhoods.  Since eating is important for us and knowing that’s never easy for our little ones to enjoy a suitable food, we took time to involve them in decision and all of them really appreciated to share meals together.

The sharing spirit is a great life lesson to teach to children. In that regard, we arranged several days and in different areas (4 neighborhoods in Saint-Louis town and one in Dakar, because we are collaborating with other local groups of young people) to carry out those activities and we relied on other association members to help in food distribution.

We prepared either breakfasts for some or lunch and dinner for others, depending on the circumstances. Everyone (street children, nice marabouts, kids in poor neighborhoods, teenagers and local people) enjoyed meals and hoped that life will return to normal soon.

 It was a great occasion of reunions, as if we were back to our life before the Corona virus. We could notice in kids face a sense of relief and we realized that they needed that. In fact, since the pandemic we lived with fear and concern, so getting back together was like a fraternal meeting and made us feel free and happy.

Thanks again to our two special friends Fred and Nancy, for supporting, coaching and advising us in these hard times. We hope to see them in Senegal in the near future.