Historical Description of the Organisation
A Task Group which eventually become The Child Protection Alliance in The Gambia was established on 26th April 2001 following a series of meetings and a panel discussion on child abuse issues instigated by UNICEF, The Department of Social Welfare and BAFROW.
Gambia was represented at the 1996 Stockholm Conference on Sexual Exploitation but little progress on implementation had been achieved in subsequent years. Following the September 2000 ECPAT West Africa Regional Conference in Dakar on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, the impetus developed to get the agenda of Child Sexual Exploitation moving in The Gambia.
A panel discussion was hosted by UNICEF in February 2001 at which 25 organisations working in the field of childcare were represented. At that meeting information on both the 1st World Conference on Child Sexual Exploitation in Stockholm 1996 and the Dakar Conference on Child Sexual Exploitation 2000 was presented. It was out of this meeting that a call went up to provide protection from abuse for children in The Gambia. The remit was extended beyond commercial sexual exploitation to cover child abuse in general and The Child Protection Alliance came into existence. The Task Group began meeting in April 2001 and a Draft National Plan of Action was completed by August 2001.
The official launch of the CPA was timed to correspond with the commemoration of the Day of the African Child on the 16th June 2001.
A two-day Workshop was held on the 21st and 22nd November 2001. This Workshop developed, revised and endorsed the National Plan of Action on Child Protection and the membership of the Alliance was extended from 25 to 40 organisations.
During this period Micheal Montgomery, an Agency for Personal Development volunteer facilitated the Task Group and acted as Coordinator until the 1st of April 2002 when Jalamang Camara was appointed as full-time National Coordinator. The CPA moved to its present location at the TANGO (The Association for NGO's) Building in Fajara M Section Bakau, on the 1st June 2002.
Development Background of the CPA