Policy makers to Gunjur

Our relationship with Gunjur provides great opportunities to introduce policy makers to a very different human environment, and experience at first hand life with a Muslim African family and how the benefits of a community based partnership can lead to personal, professional and community development at both ends.

Lord Judd

In 1993 Lord Judd, a Labour Peer and one time minister of Overseas Development, Director of VSO, Director of OXFAM and a patron of MBG spent one week in Gunjur learning first hand of the benefits of community partnership such as the Marlborough Gunjur link and recognising the contribution that such a partnership can make to the personal, professional and community development of those involved.

Mayors to Gunjur

Five Marlborough Mayors have spent time in Gunjur learning about the impact of the link with Marlborough and giving them ammunition to support in many ways the work of MBG on their return. 

Claire Perry MP

We were delighted when in January 2013 Claire Perry Conservative MP for the Devizes constituency in which Marlborough is situated accepted our invitation to come to Gunjur for a week with her 13 year old daughter Eliza. They stayed with Bolong Touray and his family deprived of running water and electricity but meeting the remarkable kindness and hospitality that is given to all visitors from Marlborough.

It was an opportunity for them both to witness at first hand the work that we in partnership with colleagues have been doing over the past 30 years and the impact that that has had on development in the community.

They also gained an understanding of the impact that living in an African community can have in terms of questioning our own attitudes and beliefs and also some of the development priorities facing a typical African town.

A visit to the UK High Commission and to some of the development projects that the High Commission is supporting gave Claire an opportunity to understand the wider political context in which we are operating and some of the other development programmes that are taking place in The Gambia.

We hope very much to be able to invite more politicians to accompany us to Gunjur to have a similar experience.