SAVANNA ACADEMY

®Savanna Academy is a proposal for a school in the hinterlands of our ROP nations to afford rural citizens an opportunity to educate their children and to continue nurturing them in the family and community setting.

Most families have had to contend with the prospect of sending their children to schools whose quality increases with distance from family and community. More often than not, these far away schools do not offer the expectant or perceived quality education (due mainly to high student-teacher ratios), and they contribute to the often malignant migration of rural children. This takes away from the cohesive family structures in the rural areas and they nurture a culture of dependence on government or NGOs. It denies the family farm and the child, much needed development opportunity.

The idea of Savanna Academy is to offer a comprehensive 12-grade education and afford rural families the opportunity to develop their children and benefit from their assistance at the family farm. The academy will emphasize character development as well as academic growth in the arts and sciences.

• We will hire the best teachers possible.

• We will design a curriculum unique to the needs of the rural child and is tailored to the growth of the total child.

• We will limit student-teacher ratio to a level most conducive to healthful learning without affecting comprehension by all students.

• We will divide our student body between day and boarding students to encourage students’ participation on family farms.

• We will offer outdoor activity that encourage volunteerism, discovery, and collaborative work and play among students.

Savanna Academy will be a Private Non-Profit school and therefore will afford the most rural families an opportunity at a high quality of education without sacrificing family cohesion and growth.

The construction of the Academy and attendant facilities will rely heavily on renewable sources of energy, re-use of non-biodegradable material that will otherwise go to landfills, and Eco-friendly methods of construction. We will seek the assistance and partnership of sustainable development agencies, institutions, and desiring individuals.

®Senator Edward Kennedy Nyakoi Vision Institute (SEVINK)

This is an idea for a vision center  on the campus of Savanna Academy. The objective is to promote eye-health and the prevention of diseases of the eye such as trachoma and cataracts and treatment of more advanced cases of Glaucoma.

Rural residents of Gambia, Senegal, Mali, SierraLeone, Liberia, and the Guineas conakry and Bissau have limited access to clean drinking water, sanitary sewerage, or refrigeration to help ward off common preventable diseases or medical facilities and doctors to treat highly contagious diseases. There is generally no organised epidemeological systems to track or check communication of disease.

Most rural folk are subsistence farmers whose capacity for sustenance depends on physical and opthalmic health. The growing number of people who are slowly going blind from uveitis, trachoma, cataract, and macular degeneration has significantly reduced the quality of democratic or productive life for these folk, generally in their middle and most productive ages.

Sightsavers International, a UK based charity, is one of a few organisations helping to stem the tide of this debilitating state of affairs. Not only does Sightsavers assist in small incision surgeries, they also help train technicians and care-givers at their new Sheikh Zayed Regional Eye Care Center in Kanifing, Gambia. The Institute of Tropical Opthalmology (IOTA) in Mali has been at the forefront of the fight against Trachoma and other eye diseases for decades, beginning as a multinational concern of member states. United for Sight complements local efforts in eyecare and eye-health through it Global Impact Fellows volunteer program in Ghana and India.

We look forward to partner with these and many other philanthropic organisations to offer a rural extension to eye-care and to bring opthalmic services and resources to rural folk so that the inconveniences and unaffordability of travel to the urban areas no longer becomes a hinderance to eye health.

SEVINK will complement our mission to keep the rural family together and enhance their capacity to participate fully in democratic life unhindered by the prospect of burdensome migration.

SEVINK will provide surgical services and recuperative resources and facilities so that the patient stays at the institute under the care of well-trained personnel to include senior students of the opthalmology club. These students will be trained in disease prevention, eye-health maintenance, anaesthesiology, post-surgical recuperative care, and they will be trained by renown surgeons. The Institute will have a Resident Surgeon, who will be assisted by visiting surgeons from Africa and other parts of the world. The Institute will consist of the home of the Resident Surgeon, a home for visiting surgeons, the main medical building and dormitory for the Savanna Academy Opthalmology Society whose students will assist in maintenance and post-operative care for the patients.

We will consult with Opthalmologists to put together figures for capital outlay for construction and O&M and funds flow requirements. We are working on mechanisms by which the Academy can generate up to 100% of recurring costs after construction and equipment. We will share our findings with you here.

®Deyda Hydara Sustainable Development club

In honour of one of the most progressive citizens of Gambia and co-founder of The Point Newspaper who was assassinated on the anniversary of his newspaper, we look forward to a student club at Savanna Academy in Deyda’s name. The idea, along the lines of the opthalmology society, is for junior and senior students of Savanna Academy to design and complete a project of their choice and in collaboration with the Academy community. This to encourage responsibility, industry, innovation, and civic participation in the area of sustainable development and growth. The project will be a requirement for graduation and will be completed in one month to culminate in a presentation to the entire Academy assembly.

Students will be paired with an academy councillor, 5 students to a team and emphasis will be placed on teamwork and collaborative industry. This will help in preparing our students for collegial work and civic participation in their university and professional communities.

The GDP board of Directors will work with our partners and local industry to develop the parameters of this pre-requisite club further.

Here is a preliminary idea of the Savannah Academy Campus:

Thank you for visiting. Come again and grow with us.