Minutes of Executive Meeting, 9/15/2013

Minutes of last executive Meeting, 9/15/2013

Participants

Amadou B. Jallow

M. B. Krubally

Pa Joof

Kawsu Sillah

Bakary Jallow

Alhagie Sey

Cherno B. Jallow

Mamadou Salieu Jallow

Chairman: MB Krubally

Secretaries: Cherno B. Jallow & Amadou B. Jallow

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Details

Financial Update/As of meeting date, the following balances remained in the various accounts:

1. 3868.43 Dollars/USA

2. 220 Pounds/UK

3. 201 Euros/ Holland plus 100 Euros in the hands of Ousainou Krubally in Germany

4. 25,000 Dalasis/The Gambia

Ramadan Project: MB Krubally thanked the project manager Kawsu Sillah and his team for their efforts in launching the initiative in Basse. He said it had been a successful venture. He also thanked Bakary Jallow for his wonderful article on the website, which had received a lot of praise from the readership. He also thanked Cherno Baba Jallow and the editorial board for manning the website.

Transition/handing over: matters had remained the same. Amadou B. Jallow said Dawda had to be a key figure in answering questions about whatever balances of money owed. He also urged those executive members who were there, who dealt with Dawda directly to figure out how much exactly Dawda needed to refund the organization. Dawda had already reportedly refunded D9000 to FoB. 

Pa Joof said he thought there could be other balances accruing from the health project… he would dig into the records.

MB lamented that when money was being transferred to Dawda, it appeared that there was no official documentation to show disbursements, although he said the meeting minutes would show the monies disbursed as the minutes are official records. He said a lesson well learned from this issue was to document in writing whatever amounts changed hands, and to be careful not to send large sums at a go.

MB reported that Modou Kuto had paid to Filly Sabally the sum of D500 being membership dues for some folks in town.

Modou Barrow’s contribution, purportedly sent to Dawda through Barrow’s younger brother in Basse, had not been accounted for.

Kawsu said Modou Barrow’s brother Fanding had told him that he had given the sum of D1200 to Dawda Sankareh; that such an amount had indeed changed hands.

MB urged Pa Joof and Sellou Jallow, who had directly dealt with Dawda, to help ascertain the exact amounts disbursed to Dawda and how much he ought to refund FoB.

Auditing: MB asked if FoB auditor Mutarr Jallow had done his auditing of FoB. Mutarr wasn’t present to respond, but Amadou said that Mutarr had all along stressed that for him to do a full audit, the Dawda issue would need to be cleared first.

But MB said Mutarr didn’t need to wait for the Dawda issue to clear before he began an audit; he could start with the Ramadan project and send out a report to that effect.

Tree Planting: MB asked Kawsu how far the tree planting plan had gone, and Sillah said that he had been away from Basse and so had not been able to convene a meeting but he would confer with Abubakarr Krubally, Alhagie Jallow and others immediately. For the tree planting exercise, Sillah said it involved a lot of things like buying seedlings from Kombo, locating a place where the trees will be planted, etc. He said he thought the cleaning exercise would be a lot easier to do and accomplish and it entailed involving the community.

MB suggested the public speaking initiative talked about within the executive sometime ago, be incorporated within this project and to involve Alhagie Jallow, a teacher at Nasir Senior Secondary School.

Cherno B. Jallow proposed giving the participants at the tree planting exercises some tokens of appreciation be they lunches, pens, t-shirts, etc. He also said Radio Basse DJs could be relied upon to spread out the word and provide entertainment at the sites to be cleaned. He said this would provide some motivation and build interest in the community. 

Bakary Jallow said during his days at Nasir, he had belonged to different groups involved in tree planting, health education, etc. He suggested FoB engage such groups at Nasir and St. George’s about taking part in tree planting and cleaning exercises, and reward them somehow for their participations.

Amadou recalled that during his days at St. George’s, he did participate in tree planting exercises at the school, and in fact, during his last trip to the school, he had seen the very tree he had planted some years ago. The tree has grown and matured over time. He said the Dept. of Agriculture in Basse gave them some seedlings, so he said there were opportunities available for tree planting exercises to bear fruit in Basse.

MB urged folks to spread out the word about FoB in social media, particularly on Facebook.

Fundraising: MB reported that there was going to be a reggae concert in Basse during the “Tobaski,” and he suggested Kawsu touch base with the organizers and see how profitable such a venture was going to be and whether FoB could tap into musical concerts as a way of raising funds.

Cherno thought using Jaliba Kuyateh and the Kumareh Band would be far more successful than relying on the young musicians. Kawsu agreed that Jaliba had a huge following in Basse and that such a venture could yield dividends for FoB.

MB urged Cherno and Kawsu to begin contacting the Jaliba crew and brainstorm on the modalities of a concert in Basse.

Open Discussion/round table

Mr. Mamadou Salieu Jallow reported that the balance of the Ramadan Project was D11, 598. He also questioned the status of one Mr. Ndow's pledge; MB responded that it was only a matter of the association collecting it. MB said he was going to reach out to Hassan Touray to make arrangement to pick up the funds. MB also suggested that Kawsu reach out to the folks on the ground about their pledges.

Kawsu was tasked with the responsibility of taking pictures of the ongoing Hella Kunda Mosque Project and send them to MB. He promised to get this done as soon as possible.

Amadou suggested that the association look into organizing a shoe drive to collect used shoes to be sent to Basse. The collected shoes can be sold at discounted prices and the revenue used to fund other projects. To that MB responded, “This was my motivation for suggesting that we buy the exercise books.” Unfortunately, the idea of buying the exercise books did not get any traction; only Kawsu responded to MB's e-mail.

Mamadou Salieu said that his reservation for buying the exercise books was that if all marked up costs were factored, the exercise books will cost the association way more than what each exercise book was purchased for. This will defeat the purpose of what the association was trying to achieve. He suggested consulting with the folks on the ground who are well-acquainted with the costs of such items.  

Bakary asked whether the need for the exercise books was assessed. He said that exercise books were often made available to students by government departments and other non-government organizations at little or no cost to them. He said that he did not see the need for the association to buy and send the exercise books. MB acknowledged the great feedback from Bakary. However, he said that the feedback should have been sent as an e-mail response to his initial e-mail about the topic. MB went on to say that responding to e-mails is very important to keep the conversation going. It shows that other people are reading the e-mails as that it also help in the decision-making process. Otherwise he warned, the sender might conclude that others were not interested and eventually stop sending e-mail communications.

On a different note, Kawsu said that former members on the ground who had paid their membership dues from 2009 to 2011 were unhappy that their names were not published on the website. It was agreed that due to technological issues the lists for those three years couldn't be on the website. Therefore, Mr. Sillah was asked to apologize to anyone who raised that concern. The association will make sure that moving forward, anyone who pays his/her membership fees will have their names reflected on the website.

Mamadou Salieu suggested that we change the “Basse” tab on the website to say “About Us”. This, he said, would make it easier for people visiting the website to know where to look for information about the association.

Kawsu also suggested putting former executive members’ information on the website.

The meeting, lasting 1 hour 20 minutes, was opened and closed with prayers by Amadou B. Jallow and Kawsu Sillah respectively.