The Nova Scotia - Gambia Association (NSGA): Canadians and Gambians working together to build healthy communities all across the Gambia.

Our Mission

The Nova Scotia-Gambia Association is a Canadian non-profit development organization that works with West Africans on various initiatives which promote healthy, sustainable, and equitable futures for all Gambians.

About The Nova Scotia - Gambia Association (NSGA)

The NSGA is a collaboration of Nova Scotians and West Africans, volunteers and employees, who work together to support the development and welfare of communities and youths in the Gambia.

Since its founding in 1985, the NSGA has been working to destigmatize the topics of HIV/AIDS and its prevention, healthy sexual relationships, gender equality, and other important topics in Gambian society. In order to address these issues, the NSGA provides Peer Health Education (PHE) programs which have gone nation-wide, reaching 100 000 students in over 200 schools and 1000 villages in the last four years alone. PHE programs revolve around the students. Every year, each participating school identifies 30 students as official peer health educators (and 2 supervising teachers) who are trained in health education as well as public speaking, theatre, design, and leadership. Peer Health Educators are then responsible for making presentations, plays, and posters for their peers on these important topics, and are tasked with providing their out-of-school peers, family members and neighbours with the important health information they would not have access to otherwise.

In addition to the PHE programs, the NSGA engages communities in conversations about its most important issues (HIV/AIDS, Malaria, healthy relationships, clean drinking water, etc.) through cinematic presentations of Gambian-produced films on the aforementioned topics. The PHE and Community Cinema methods have extended the NSGA's reach beyond the classroom and social centers by empowering youth and community members to be active participants in their communities' health and wellness education.