Status Report and Summer Greetings!

Sending my regards to everyone as you enjoy what has been a very varied summer so far, with all kinds of weather!

Butterfly Friends has turned 18 and is going through a turbulent phase in life.

Much about our future is uncertain, but we know quite a bit about the past, and so do our friends:

We started our work on a small scale, working with young children in The Gambia—a preschool, or “nursery” as it’s called there, modeled after the English system.

Over the years, our project has grown into what it is today, with more than 2,000 students attending school with us daily, all the way through high school.

We’ve achieved excellent results—that is, excellent exam scores—thanks to both talented students and dedicated teachers; in fact, our school is ranked as the fourth best in the country.

This has been recognized in The Gambia, and we are immensely proud and delighted that our students are doing so well.

We would also like to point out that, until January of this year, we operated a health center that served as the first line of care in its area, offering services such as midwives and nurses, prenatal and infant checkups, a maternity ward, gynecological examinations, and family planning services.

As of today, we are paying the salaries of the midwives at the health center. During the first four months of this year, they attended an average of about one birth per day; all births were without complications, and the babies had normal birth weights except for one child, born in January, who weighed less than 2.5 kg. (Birth weight in Africa is typically lower than here in Scandinavia.)

As mentioned, the midwives also perform prenatal checkups, but, just like here, they are also nurses and provide general nursing care as needed. One of the midwives performs pelvic exams on women.

In February and March combined, cervical abnormalities were detected in four women; they received treatment for this at a hospital.

We are very happy that we can help maintain this healthcare service for the people of New Jeshwang, The Gambia.

We’ve had great supporters both here at home and locally in The Gambia; here in Norway, we have and have had dedicated sponsors, and we’ve been fortunate to have schools that help out. Rosthaug High School has made a significant contribution; several of its students have visited the schools in The Gambia together with students from Sigdal Middle School, which contributes funds to the schools every year.

Vikersund Elementary School and Roligheden Middle School have donated the proceeds from their volunteer work events to our schools for many years.

The value of this goes beyond just money; the mutual knowledge and understanding of global conditions are a huge bonus.

We have received school supplies and other gifts from countless donors across much of Norway.

In The Gambia, our staff has been a great help; here we must mention Seedy Drammeh, who served as coordinator until this spring, when he left the organization.

He coordinated the construction projects, participated in the hiring process, and collaborated with the school principals.

All this in addition to always being ready to pitch in in many other areas.

We are a major employer in The Gambia, with 230 employees, and our payroll budget reflects that.

Our finances have been unstable over the past couple of years; among other things, we are now feeling the direct impact of the COVID-19 crisis firsthand, and it has become more difficult to bring people together.

The situation is so serious that it appears Butterfly Friends will have to close at least the high school, which accounts for the largest expense in the budget. This is highly undesirable; we have been looking forward to graduating yet another class of talented and intellectually curious young people who could contribute to positive development in their home country.

If you have good suggestions for funding sources, or if you yourself are such a source, have good ideas, or relevant input, we’d really love to hear from you!

In that case, please send an email to: sponsor@butterflyfriends.no!

If you’d like to become a sponsor for 200 kroner per month, please register here on our website.

This appeal is on behalf of our more than 2,000 students and 230 staff members—help us help them!

Best regards,

Butterfly Friends!

P.S. From the very beginning, we’ve been committed to prioritizing girls and young women in our school classes.

This was and remains in line with a widely accepted consensus among social scientists: that educated women are the key to positive development in poor countries. They gain knowledge about how to better care for their families, they have fewer children because their children survive childhood, and they contribute more to the family economy. Among many other positive outcomes.

This is why there is an approximate 80/20 percentage split in favor of girls in our schools.

We are particularly saddened on behalf of our 300 high school students; normally, 100 of them would be graduating next spring.