La Rotllana association
La Rotllana is an entity, headquartered in the city of Badalona, which in recent years has established a strong bond with the town of Santa Maria de Palautordera, since some of its members and professionals reside in Palau. This fact has facilitated that in recent years some summer leisure activities of La Rotllana were developed in Palau, and that over time international projects were also carried out in cooperation with the youth council, as well as awareness and solidarity campaigns with various entities of the town.
The relationship with Senegal began in 2014, when we came into contact with the Senegalese immigrant population in Santa Maria de Palautordera, who were given support to send an ambulance to the town of Dar el Salam, also in the Tambacounda region. . Through various economic campaigns it was possible to buy a second-hand ambulance in Catalonia, it was rigorously revised and re-equipped, to be sent to the health home, equivalent to a rural health center, in the town of Sar el Salam, where it continues to provide service.
After achieving the goal of putting the ambulance into service, the following challenge was twofold:
Support the constitution of an association to the town of Gumal, Sare Omar ly.
Help the people of Gumal build and start their first school in the town’s history. The assignment of the first teacher and the start-up of the first school space was achieved during the year 2017 and currently the main objective is to build the definitive school equipment in Gumal.
“Gumal-Sare Omar ly” association
This association with a recent official history, officially recognized by the government of Senegal in 2017, began to take shape in 2015, and takes a process of more than a year of work for its implementation and official constitution, until finally becoming in a functional organization.
The association was born from the sensitization of the villagers to join efforts with the children of the immigrant people in different parts of the world, in order to improve the material and social conditions of the town of Gumal.
Currently, the main objective of the association is to achieve the creation of the first school in town conditions to care for its children. So far the successes of the association visually may not seem very great, but for the social reality of Senegal they represent great steps at the local level for the history of the town.
- First of all, officially register the association. What we understand in our territory as an easy and simple process, formalizing and legalizing an NGO or association, in Senegal is very difficult for several reasons: the lack of material means, the personal difficulties of the population, and the lack of culture and associative history according to our culture and way of understanding.
- Given this first step of establishing itself, the second great success of the Gumal-Sare Omar ly association has been to obtain the recognition of the central government of Senegal to receive the designation of a teacher by their school, and to manage to build the first physical structure that they let the educational activity begin in the village. In short, “the first school in history.”