When Sallie and I were in the Gambia is January, we took the opportunity to go with Adama, our colleague and partner in The Gambia, into the neighbouring country of Senegal to explore the possibilities for us working there too.  The Gambia and Senegal have close ties in the field of responsible tourism and Adama had identified possible new partners and projects for us to look at.

We travelled south from the Gambia into the beautiful region of Casamance in southern Senegal.  It was a bumpy journey – potholes in Senegal appear to be an even worse problem than in the UK!  With us on the journey were Mousa Konte and Kidialy from the Federation of Private Camps of Ziguinchor – these are the people we will work with when the partnership is set up. 

The Federation is an association of 60 members, running lodges of different types and sizes across Senegal.  Their aim is to establish standards across all lodges in the association and to develop their capacity, for example through workshops.

We stayed in one of their lodges in the small town of Oussouye – a beautiful and relaxing place to stay.  This will be the base for volunteers when we start to work there. 

We held discussions with Konte and Kidialy about areas where they felt volunteers could best offer support, both for their own organisation and with other local projects, and we visited a technical school where the staff were keen to explore the possibility of having volunteers working with them. 

We also drove out to Cap Skirring, a town a little further along the coast – there are good facilities here including a small airport and it would make a wonderful place for volunteers to go for a weekend break!

There are many possibilities for building a great working relationship with Konte, Kidialy and others from their team, and for setting up worthwhile placements for volunteers.  However Senegal is a largely French-speaking country so the first and predominant need would be to develop their English-speaking skills.  We know people and places has many volunteers who are really good at helping people improve their conversational English – just look at the wonderful work our volunteers have done in Morocco!  So we are appealing for volunteers willing to do a similar job in Senegal, either in-country or working online.  If you feel this is an area where you could contribute, please email dianne@travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk or sallie@travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk – we really need your help to get this new volunteer opportunity established.