Legs4Africa is very pleased to announce that they have partnered with The Gambia Federation of Disabled. Known as the GFD to its friends, it is the umbrella organisation that looks over all of the disabled peoples groups in The Gambia, from schools for the blind to the Gambian Paralympic Committee.

In January we had the privilege of spending some time with the director of the GFD, Ebrima Dibbasey. He really loved what Legs4Africa where all about and was very excited about our future plans within Gambia. So much so that he agreed to partner with us and take on a heap of work that will be of massive benefit to Legs4Africa and all of the Gambian amputees.

The most exciting part is that they have agreed to document where every limb that Legs4Africa provides ends up. They will give us information on each amputee recipient including name, phone number, how/when they lost their limb and a full photograph. There are two main benefits here, we can begin to obtain invaluable data on amputations in West Africa that is currently non-existent, and we can also connect our Leg Donors in the UK to their Leg Recipient counterparts in the Gambia.

But the GFDs generosity doesn’t stop there, they have also agreed to help us with the following:

• Help us run outreach programs to get mobility equipment and expertise out to the poorest rural areas.
• Provide volunteer roles for prosthetic specialists, physiotherapists, teachers and film-makers.
• Help us apply for government funding to modernise the Banjul mobility centre.
• Explore new technologies such as 3d printing

We managed to write-up and sign-off a very important looking document with them, which in summary says, “We’ll keep bringing you mobility equipment and you help us with anything we need”. The agreement was then made public when Tom and Phil starred on Disability Hour on West Coast Radio 2