Our Programs
Three flagship initiatives that reach women, girls, and youth across The Gambia with support, education, and empowerment.
SRHR & Comprehensive Sexuality Education
In The Gambia, the conversation about sexuality is often framed as morality and bad influence. Fantanka frames it differently — around protection and vulnerability. Silence does not protect children. It protects perpetrators and misinformation.
When young people lack accurate, age-appropriate information about their bodies, rights, consent, and relationships, they become easier to exploit and harder to support.
Comprehensive sexuality education goes beyond a single "sex talk." It is structured learning about mental, emotional, physical, and social wellbeing in relation to sexuality, relationships, and safety. It strengthens skills that reduce harm: communication, decision-making, boundary-setting, and consent literacy.
Fantanka advocates for comprehensive sexuality education in schools, madrassas, and non-formal education institutions, and engages parents and community gatekeepers so that the public conversation shifts from panic to protection.
Silence does not protect children. It protects perpetrators and misinformation. Our goal is not to push children into anything — it is to protect them with truthful knowledge and rights awareness.
What We Offer
- ✓Community outreach and advocacy for SRHR access
- ✓Engagement with schools, madrassas, and non-formal institutions
- ✓Age-appropriate, culturally sensitive education
- ✓Parent and community gatekeeper engagement
- ✓Policy advocacy for a national CSE curriculum
- ✓Coordination with key ministries on child protection standards
Gender Justice, SGBV Prevention & Survivor Support
Gender-based violence is not just "something that happens." It is sustained by power — unequal relationships, harmful norms, and social environments where silence is rewarded and disclosure is punished.
When women and girls are not safe, development is not real. The loss is personal, but it also becomes national — because trauma limits education, employment, participation, and the ability to live with dignity.
Fantanka supports survivors through psychosocial services and safe engagement spaces. Support is not charity — it is part of restoring agency after harm, especially where survivors have been taught that speaking is shameful.
Fantanka has trained over 1,000 women and girls, and provided psychosocial support to more than 500 survivors of gender-based violence, contributing to increased community awareness and more reporting.
Where victims are not supported to heal, it is difficult for them to engage in accountability initiatives — and violence repeats. Healing and accountability cannot be separated.
What We Offer
- ✓Psychosocial support for survivors
- ✓Safe engagement spaces for women and girls
- ✓Trainings and mentorship for 1,000+ women and girls
- ✓Support to 500+ GBV survivors
- ✓Community advocacy and SGBV prevention
- ✓Advocacy for survivor-centred legal reform
Youth, Transitional Justice & "Never Again"
Young people are often treated as a future concern, but transitional justice is not only about the past. It is about preventing recurrence — and that requires youth understanding what went wrong and how institutions, norms, and leadership failures produced violations.
Fantanka's Youth Shadow Report documents how violations affected multiple youth sub-groups, including beach youth, young women exploited within systems of power, and children of victims and perpetrators who inherit social and economic fallout.
Fantanka creates youth-friendly civic education and dialogue spaces that do not talk down to young people. In April 2025, safe space engagements in Bansang, Jarra Pakalinding, and Daddy Jobe introduced over thirty students to transitional justice, the AUTJP, and SGBV.
We also produce child-friendly justice learning — because "Never Again" is not only a slogan adults repeat. It requires young people who understand what happened and why it must not be repeated.
When the space is respectful and accessible, young people engage critically and maturely with difficult national questions. Exclusion is what is normal — not youth disengagement.
What We Offer
- ✓Youth Shadow Report on violations under the Jammeh era
- ✓Child-friendly TRRC report (English and Arabic)
- ✓Safe space engagements across regions
- ✓Transitional justice education in schools and madrassas
- ✓Youth and Children's Network for accountability monitoring
- ✓Interschool debates, essay and poetry competitions
Migration, Memory & Dignity
Migration is often treated as an economic storyline or a moral lecture. Fantanka approaches it as a rights and dignity question. During the Jammeh era, serious breaches of political, social, and economic rights drove many Gambians into exile or dangerous routes.
Fantanka engaged two groups of returned migrants — young women who migrated to Middle Eastern countries and experienced exploitation and forced labour, and young men who travelled via the "backway" route and encountered abuses including kidnapping and extortion.
Our engagement combined informal group discussions, interviews, and a memorialisation initiative using a River of Life exercise and body-mapping. The River of Life is an alternative truth-telling method for participants who struggle with formal testimony settings or language barriers, placing survivors at the centre of the narrative.
The process revealed a major gap — most participants had never received any form of MHPSS support despite severe experiences and continued stigma after returning.
The River of Life is not just "art." It is an alternative truth-telling method for survivors who cannot tell their story in formal settings — placing them at the centre of the narrative.
What We Offer
- ✓Engagement with returned migrants and survivors
- ✓River of Life and body-mapping truth-telling exercises
- ✓Trauma-informed safeguards throughout
- ✓Exhibition at ANEKED's Memory House
- ✓Documentation of migration harms within TJ framework
- ✓Advocacy for MHPSS access for returnees
Reform & Accountability ("Never Again")
Truth-seeking produces findings, but implementation requires state architecture that can carry reforms. In The Gambia, the TRRC and constitutional review process did not sufficiently connect during their mandates — even though constitutional design is one of the strongest tools for guaranteeing non-repetition.
Through the project "Consolidating TJ Gains Through Constitution Drafting," Fantanka worked in collaboration with Charter 70 and Our Nation Our Voice to reignite national discussion on synergies between transitional justice and constitution drafting.
Ten radio programs were held between March and April 2023, bringing together National Assembly members, CSOs, victims, musician activists, and youth influencers. A one-day workshop for 20 Children's National Assembly members (ages 12–18) guided participants to identify constitutional remedies and debate rights issues like separation of powers and protest rights.
Fantanka also produced an SGBV docudrama based on the TRRC's findings, screened across rural communities in Mandinka and Wolof, bringing truth-seeking findings directly to the people most affected.
Constitutional design is one of the strongest tools for guaranteeing non-repetition — limiting executive overreach, strengthening rights protections, and embedding institutional reforms.
What We Offer
- ✓10 radio programmes on TJ and constitutional reform
- ✓Children's National Assembly workshop (20 participants, ages 12–18)
- ✓Collaboration with Charter 70 and Our Nation Our Voice
- ✓SGBV docudrama in Mandinka and Wolof
- ✓Sanawuya drama on reconciliation and social cohesion
- ✓Community screenings across 6 rural regions
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