Fifty girls drawn from different junior secondary schools in the country who are currently undergoing a summer programme in Mathematics and Science organised by the Forum for African Women Educationalists The Gambia Chapter (FAWEGAM) yesterday afternoon visited the Observer Company, publisher of the Daily Observer Newspaper.

The girls were accompanied to the Observer Complex by their teachers and officials of FAWEGAM. The visit was meant to boost the confidence of the girls to take up the journalism profession and also to get first class information on how a newspaper is produced.

Speaking to our reporters shortly after a conducted tour of the offices, Absa Saidykhan, assistant coordinator of FAWEGAM explained that girls were brought to the Daily Observer in order to expose them to other fields different from secretarial work  and nursing, the two major gender stereotyped occupations. She added that the girls were also interested in visiting Observer because they were inspired by a female journalist, Fatou Jobe of  GRTS, who gave them an insight of what journalism entails.  "Our mandate is to help in the education of girls and young women; these are girls from different schools including the Greater Banjul area, so helping these children to develop themselves in maths, science and technology is important because  it would expose them to fields they have never been interested in, journalism for instance," she remarked.

Saidykhan went on to say that she thought journalism is a man's job but until of late they have seen female journalists and they hope there would be more of them when these children grow up. She then advise other students to engage themselves in the fields of maths, science and technology so that they can become journalists, engineers, lawyers and architects in future.

One of the students, Isatou T Touray,  revealed that the purpose of their visit was to know how the company operates and publishes its daily newspaper, among other things. She said they have learnt a lot from all the units they visited in the Observer Company, adding that the visit has given her the opportunity to learn more about newspaper production. She advised her colleagues to take their education seriously so that they can achieve their goals in future. She finally thanked the Observer staff for their generosity and prayed that the company continues to serve the people in this country and beyond.