*waving excitedly*
You wonder if I’ve already snapped out of the exams nightmare, right? Well, not yet. It’s just the beginning but I’ve finally decided that stress and fear shall not get me the grades, so I’m ditching them. Well, at least, that’s what I TELL myself. I don’t know how far I’ll go with practising it, but we’ll see.
Anyway, two posts ago, I announced to you beautiful people that a colleague/friend and I were selected as part of Moremi Initiative’s top 25 Most Outstanding Emerging Women Leaders in Africa for 2012. I had loads of congratulatory messages and people saying how proud they were and how they’re not surprised by the news, as the potential has always been made manifest. Some pretty ‘help me swell my head‘ moments, I should say. Some messages made me smile, some made me laugh and others made me cry. Tears of joy and, maybe, pride. Tears that made me realise just how many people actually see even greater potential than I probably see in myself. It felt good, but humbling and I could only thank Allah for the blessings. I am sure Aisha, my friend, also had a similar response to her announcement.
Now, getting this award meant we were also selected to benefit from a leadership training Institute in Ghana from July 10th to August 1st 2012. As we both received partial scholarships to the institute, we were tasked with raising the remaining cost, amounting to $2750. Apparently, this is part of the plan to help us hone our leadership skills and prepare us for the projects we are expected to start at the end of the training. I made an open call to all my readers, asking for donations from those who wanted to help in raising the funds needed. A few people suggested we set up an online system that would enable people to make contributions from all parts of the world. You know Linguere has readers in the Czech Republic, Iceland and some other places that make me go ‘oh wow‘ when I browse through my Stats page.
To cut a long story short(Dear WordPress, I know very well that this is a cliché, but it’s my choice so allow me jor’). What was I saying? Oh yes, so with the help of my geek friend (Hello Serign), we set up a facility on ChipIn.com. It’s been there since May 22nd, but we only started receiving contributions on there last night. Yaaay! You all can show some more pride, some more confidence and how much you support us by making donations on here . We’ll be extremely psyched to know you all have ‘got our back’. Should that read backs? Oh well. 🙂
We’ve also got good publicity on the media as is expected for all Fellows( that’s what we’re called ). The articles/ press releases were almost identical, but for a few tweaks made by a few media houses. The Daily Observer did a good job with this and it got reproduced on other news sites like allafrica.com and other travel blogs. The Daily News came up with this and The Point newspaper had this article about us. I also did an interview with The Standard newspaper but can’t provide links, as their site got its last update sometime in December.(Sheriff Bojang, if you’re reading this, please know you have a lot of people outside The Gambia who would want to get access to The Standard online regularly).
It’s been a good start and we hope for more support. To stay in touch with our activities, check out and ‘LIKE’ our Facebook Page and share the links with friends and family. We thank all those who’ve sent us donations. To those who’ve pledged to support before our deadline of June 20th, we thank you too, while anticipating receipt of your donations. Spread the word and help take The Gambia to MILEAD 2012. Remember to ‘chip in’ through Our Chip In account or contact us through Facebook if you want to take other routes. Merci et au revoir! Catch y’all soonest! 🙂