Gambia: Samba Jaiteh Leaves for Nelson Mandela Fellowship Today

15 July 2022
The Point (Banjul)

Samba Jaiteh, Advocate for Disability Rights, Radio Talk Host and Founder of the newly created Foundation for the Civic Rights of Persons with Disabilities "FCRPD,"selected in 2021 as a Nelson Mandela Fellow,is headed early morning 15 July 2022 to the United States of America for three weeks of networking and exchange among other Nelson Mandela Fellows.

Prevented last year by the COVID Pandemic from on site exchange, Samba Jaiteh is now an unrecognized, unofficial ambassador of The Gambia as a Nation and especially as a legally blind person, despite tremendous odds, who has achieved a university education and quite a number of other accolades.

Samba is well able to represent both The Gambia and people with disabilities in The Gambia. He lives it and it's his God-given passion to improve lives for all - those with - and without - disabilities. He believes if some of us are excluded The Gambia suffers exclusion from reaching the UN SDGs -and The Gambia is poorer without the enrichment of including all within our Society.

Earlier today Samba met with Rosemary Cardoso, Founder of Cape Point-based Star Development Center, an advocacy foundation for the disabled, primarily focused among the deaf, yet inclusive of all. They determined to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding to seek the civic and civil rights of the differently enabled, to network among The Gambia's majority population of entrepreneurs, government, and international agencies to develop opportunities in every area of life for every segment of marginalized people in The Gambia as well as outreaching throughout W Africa and the world.

The fact that the Gambia Federation of the Disabled's website has multiple empty pages reflects the zero impact of that organization on the people in The Gambia living daily with the marginalization constraints of disability! Imagine one woman who is disabled is doubly marginalized - and if an uneducated youth - where does that put a person in terms of civic and civil rights. Its report page (https://gfdgambia.weebly.com/reports.htm} quotes from a June 2012 workshop "IF there is NO change - take the story to the media" - It is this we do today - Thank you Gambian and Global Media for taking up the gauntlet.

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