Darra – Children’s Shelter in The Gambia
Traditionally, a Darra is a commonly financed save house of a mosque community in Gambia providing boys with food and basic religious education. We modernized that idea: Our Darra is open for boys and girls. Also, we give love and care, medical and social support, and general and religious education on equal terms.
Our Darra serves as either permanent or temporary shelter for those who lost one or both parents, or whose family cannot afford their living costs due to rough economic circumstances.
Childhood in The Gambia
… in our days, is something that every family in the country is trying to improve: more education, more medical support, less time consuming household courses. The resources needed for such a big aim are not equally divided between all of them. Therefore, Sheikh Tihami Ibrahim Nyass Foundation provides with it’s compound a caring home for those children who’s disadvantaged families cannot afford as good a childhood as they deserve.
Our Darra is a Family
We understand our Darra as a family, with Fatou Gaye as mother of all girls and boys. We asked neither religion nor tribe upon intake. The youngest child is just a baby, the eldest are attending secondary schools, dreaming of vocational training or university studies to come.
The very nature of Gambian Darra
is determined by a certain fluctuation due to the concept of extended family structures: Children arrive after their mom died, and often luckily leave with a stepmom or an aunty. Other children stay with us for a fix period of time while their parents try hard to make a living elsewhere. Some children live with us because their family lost all means to feed and house them but will return after recovering, even if it takes years. ** Read here the report of a nanny on how the Darra is like
Financing the Darra
Expenditures of the Darra are covered both by clinic’s profits and by (kind) donations. We pool all donations in the DARRA DONATION POOL.
What we need money for: food, schoolfees, pocket money to buy a meal during school hours, transport fees for all children who’s schools are too far away for walks or biking, hygienics and cosmetics, nannies salaries, infrastructure, medical treatments.
Sheikh Tihami I. Nyass foundation 