A New Approach to School Maintenance

Ever since the very first school was built, there has been one thing that has been difficult to make work in practice. That has been getting local leaders to take responsibility for maintaining the schools. For a long time, we couldn’t understand why, because we, coming from Norway, could see right away what needed to be done when we visited, but our staff in The Gambia couldn’t. Why?

The answer is actually quite obvious. All of our principals, teachers, cooks, cleaning staff, and others who work for us come from very poor backgrounds. You and I can look around our homes and see what the furnishings should look like, and we know how things work. Our staff do not. They don’t have all the nice things we have, and they’ve never seen or used the tools we use without a second thought. They simply don’t have the experience we take for granted, nor have they had the tools they need to do anything about it.

We’ve tried to remedy this in recent years by providing systematic training for managers and giving them the tools they need. Now we’re starting to see the results. They proudly send us photos and show us what they’ve accomplished. It may not seem that impressive to us, but it’s a huge step in the right direction for them. They now see what needs to be done, and they also know how to go about doing it. Fantastic—way to go!

In the photos, you can see that they’ve pruned the trees that had grown far too large, so they don’t damage the school’s roofs or walls, and they’ve also repaired chairs and desks with loose legs.