The Port of Harlem Gambian Education Partnership (POHGEP) has kicked off its annual fundraiser with the release of this magazine's issue. POHGEP starts this year's fundraising after last year's effort raised $365 more than last year's goal of $3,500. This year, the non-profit has already raised $1,500 of its $6,500 goal.

Our major initiative for the 2025-2026 year is to create and install our third permanent exhibit at the Juffureh Slavery Museum in Juffureh, North Bank, The Gambia, home of Kunte Kinteh. The latest exhibit will replace its current exhibit on slavery, and we are proposing we call it "Trans-Atlantic Human Trading and The Gambia's Overflowing Significance."

The Smiling Coast of Africa, as the country is known to many Gambian tourists, is home to the beginning and the conclusion of the trans-Atlantic human trade. Binding together this historic span are seven sites along the Gambia River, including the Maurel Frères building, built by the British in the 1880s. It's now home of the Slavery Museum.  

The building once served as a French trading and storage post for Maurel & Prom company, whose White male founders, Jean-Louis Hubert Prom (married the signare Sophie Laporte in 1828), and his cousin Hilaire Maurel (married the latter's sister, the signare Constance Laporte). 

Signares were mixed-race Senegambian women, and their marriage to these women brought them access to wealth. As of this writing, Maurel & Prom is a publicly traded oil and gas drilling and exploration company. After its 1996 restoration, the building became a small, educational, and historic museum.

Donors to the new 14-panel exhibit can have their name printed and posted on the Exhibition's Major Donors and Consultants panel. On the list already are "Anonymous" of Maryland and Virginia A. Farquharson of New Jersey. The donation categories are: $1,000 (Gold), $500 (Ivory), or $250 (beeswax). Other donors can have their names listed on our web page.

The significance of gold, ivory, and beeswax, and other commodity trading is what made the Trans-Atlantic Human trade from Gambian ports unique. This allowed Gambians more leverage to obtain goods such as weapons to protect themselves.
Our readers funded the first exhibit, West Africans in Early America, and Kevin Turner, Esq of Maryland, fully funded the larger, groundbreaking, "From These Shores."

We continue to maintain a soap-making program, update the Nema Kunku (village) mosque project, provide scholarships for 15 males and females, and maintain a small library in Nema Kunku.