AYA: Abuko Youth Association
2020
Sharing necessary skills to express individual voices within a community, enabling inspiration for a better future.
Abuko
- Abuko is a district next to Lamin (near Banjul Airport).
AYA is a youth association run by local volunteers, funded by DOAF (Daughters of Africa Foundation). - Children between 5 and 18 meet after school regularly to work on social and educational skills.
- Mini AYA Saturday Preschool Group
Background
- Many children in The Gambia grow up illiterate and employment is hard to find.
This leads to many leaving the country through the ‘Back Way’ to Europe. - Teen pregnancies, drug abuse, and poor agriculture are huge challenges for the nation.
- Youths’ opinions are traditionally treated with disregard by elders.
Our Object
- Interact and gain trust of AYA members, listening to what matters to them.
- Share skills in effective communication and encourage confidence within the children.
- Prepare for a community campaign exhibition, delivering concerns the youths have and their ideas for change .
What are we doing all this for?
(2016 WHO) STATISTICS:
- Average life expectancy for men is 61 years old, 63 for women.
- 29% men and 23.5% women die between the age of 15 and 60.
Young people in The Gambia face mass unemployment, unplanned pregnancies with harsh consequences, and premature deaths due to a poor health system. This leads to large numbers leaving for Europe, resulting a 95% chance of rejection. Subsequently, individuals are dispersed, illegal, unable to find their way home.
The UWE Team
Lessons learned
- Find time to work together – the more prep before leaving, the better.
- Find out about Gambian culture and the laws around it.
- Research the challenges of The Gambia and its communities.
- Put a plan together using DAIGO template of how we, as creatives, would get our voices heard, and apply it to the programme.
- Pull back on giant budgets and get creative with limited resources!
- Most importantly, understand that daily plans will almost certainly change. BE OKAY WITH THIS – you’re in this together and will have to adapt as a team.
Working with Mama and Malick
Mama left school at 17 years old and wants to learn more about economics to become an accountant. This was her first experience working with AYA. Swiftly, she got involved in planning and translating during group work, finding her own voice along the way.
Malick is 19 years old and had been a member of AYA from a young age before becoming a youth worker for the group. His leadership was really inspiring for the children and he remains in contact with us, determined to continue creative workshops with the group.
Writing Skills
- Freewriting, visual diaries, and wordplay exercises to gain self-confidence.
- Children who couldn’t write were able to dictate while others wrote for them.
- Public speech writing, playscripts, journalist articles, posters, poems practice to explore ways to express voices.
- Creating persuasive writing and drawing, thinking about who the audience is.
Art and design skills
- Drawing exercises to gain self-confidence.
AYA logo design, resulting in winning logo being printed. - Poster planning and production, using different printing and stencil methods.
- Illustrating with different materials – pastels, charcoal, paint, and pencils.
- Practising creativity and unique interpretations to stand out to an audience.
- Communicating messages through images.
A huge success!
Mama Africa Art Gallery
- Public art displays were banned in the previous government.
- The only established art gallery in The Gambia.
A chance for children to go somewhere inspiring and creative. - An interview with Mama Africa herself, with prepared questions being read out by the children.
- A day of team bonding and positivity to encourage more artwork form today’s youths.
AYA Community Exhibition
- A chance to show Abuko and local families all the children’s hard work from the past fortnight.
- Local and national concerns shown through different mediums – speeches, poetry, play performances, posters, news articles, and illustrations.
- Ideas of solutions shown, e.g. anti-smoking/drugs, better farming ideas, equality for girls.
- Inspiration from our gallery trip and study local business advertisements to use new skills in the future.
Future possibilities
- Good experience for youth workers, for their own employment prospects.
- Concepts given for future workshops in AYA, to continue sharing skills with children to improve their learning and employment potential.
- National news coverage promoting the work of DOAF (Daughters of Africa Foundation), encouraging stakeholders and communities to get involved.
- Creating local and national awareness for challenges facing young people and allowing their voices to be heard.
Project Gallery
