written by Sallie

When I first met Adama 20 years ago ITTOG (The Institute of Travel and Tourism of The Gambia), a college to train Gambians to enable them to access well paid jobs in the tourist industry, was his dream – to give Gambian youth the skills they needed to compete for jobs mostly held by non Gambians in the all important tourism industry -responsible tourism.

ITTOG started simply using course content shared with them by Nottingham University. Then they developed guiding, birding and community tourism training initiatives, whilst also consulting the government on pro-poor tourism initiatives. Now they are developing their own courses and curricula specifically designed for the Gambian and Senegambian market, focusing on experiential learning.

Adama and his partner Sheik Tejan have been tireless in their quest to enable Gambians to benefit from tourism in a responsible and sustainable way.

Sheik Tejan

Over the years our volunteers have supported this work – from curriculum design to training trainers – from IT to cookery skills – from business development to leatherwork

Volunteer Bill and Tejan 2009

Volunteer Ellie (bottom right) with some ITTOG students 2022

Our volunteer programme with ITTOG is ongoing and is looking for a diversity of skills from book-keeping to the performing arts.

Happy Birthday ITTOG – here’s to the next 15 years!

To learn more about our volunteer programme with ITTOG take a look here