On Thursday, 19th June 2025, GYIN Gambia Chapter had a fruitful partnership meeting with officials from Shelter For Life (SLF).
The meeting was held at the GYIN Gambia office at Gambian-German Advisory Centre for Jobs, Training and Reintegration (GGAC) in Westfield Jokor Junction.
The meeting was convened to discuss current progress, challenges, and future plans related to the Shelter For Life. It also aimed to strengthen collaboration and set responsibilities for stakeholders as GYIN Gambia is a partner identified to work with their project under its Matching Grant Scheme.
According to SFL, GYIN Gambia will conduct capacity building training for the successful applicants of the matching grant.
During the meeting, Manfred Bojang, the Cooperative and Grant Officer for SFL shared his project’s intervention areas including horticultural value chain development, improve productivity and income generation of farmers as well as their standard of living.
He also dilated on phytosanitary certificates for farmers, standardization, climate change to scale up their production.
For his part on the meeting, Mamadou Edrisa Njie, Executive Director of GYIN Gambia Chapter thanked Mr. Bojang for reaching out to GYIN Gambia for such a timely partnership and assured him of GYIN’s support at all time.
Mr Njie explained that GYIN Gambia have been working with other projects in disbursing grants to entrepreneurs across the country and have championed the famous Rural Youth Award to celebrate the successes of rural youths and serves as a source of motivation for many rural youths.
GYIN Gambia, he added, has also trained twenty-one (21) cooperatives across the country under its Cassava Outgrowers Scheme in 2020.
Ida L.B. Ceesay, the Business Development Officer for GYIN Gambia Chapter expressed delight on the new partnership.
She explained the numerous trainings that GYIN Gambia has been conducting together with its partners over the years.
Furthermore, she stated that GYIN Gambia has helped a lot of young entrepreneurs to apply for grants as it’s one of the membership benefits of the network.
The 5-year project have two (2) type of grants and are:
1. The inland grants to cooperatives worth USD 5,000 annually
2. Matching grant to MSMES worth USD 5,000 with 15% contribution from the entrepreneur or business
Both teams agreed to work on an MoU to kick-start the partnership.