Launched in 2015, Ascend Academy is an after-school youth development program for grade six boys and girls throughout the Gambia. Our staff invites and selects students from our partner schools who are motivated to grow as athletes, students, and leaders. Students selected for the academy will participate in a nine month program that features weekly basketball practices, tutoring sessions, and scrimmages with other academies around the country. To accomplish this we lean on two different curriculums.

CURRICULUMS

Basketball

Our basketball curriculum is based off the Live, Learn, and Play (LLP) curriculum that was provided by our former partners at SEEDs, a Senegalese youth basketball organization, who in partnership with USAID and the National Basketball Association developed the LLP curriculum.

The LLP curriculum aims to use basketball as a tool for developing not only athletics but intangibles such as leadership, teamwork, discipline, personal responsibility, and confidence. Since 2015 our coaches have been using the LLP as a foundation to build upon, adding in style and pedagogy unique to Gambian culture.

Tutoring

Our tutoring curriculum is better thought of as a ‘test prep’ curriculum. The curriculum was developed in 2020 by our board member Seth Williams and former Executive Director of Ascend Academy, Josh Trinder. Both members are experienced teachers and the curriculum was based off the strategies they use to prepare their own students for test taking culture. Gambia is similar to the Western world in that academic success is contingent upon the ability to pass standardized tests.

Our test prep curriculum takes tried and true taking skills from American classrooms and introduces them to students in Gambia. Students then spend the year practicing and reinforcing these skills through released testing questions that resemble the format and content of the benchmark exams they will take at school. Since installing this curriculum into our academy tutoring attendance has gone up and student interviews show a very real excitement and appreciation for the skills they are learning.

Our academic activities are not limited to this curriculum. We also provide math tutoring, life skill training (finances, goals setting, et), and bring in successful Gambians to give advice.

In addition we host two large events aimed at further enriching student experience in the program. On the academic side we host a cultural heritage field trip where students get on a bus and explore historical sites within their own country. Many of our students don’t get the opportunity to travel beyond their neighbourhoods. Our goal is to expose students to the rich history, culture, and communities within their own country.

On the basketball side we host a regional basketball tournament. Our goal for this tournament is for students to get a chance to showcase their newly developed basketball skill to the community as well as to other youth basketball programs whom we invite to join us. Check out the pictures from last year's excursions!

What happens after academy?

Though Ascend Academy is only offered to sixth graders involvement with Ascend does not end. After the nine month program, students walk away as a team who see themselves as a part of the greater Ascend community. They want to stay involved with each other and what we do. In order to meet this continued need for involvement in the Ascend community we created two organizations that provide alumni a place to grow under our banner. The first is Ascend Alumni and the second is the Ascend highschool team.

In Gambia, each major region has youth development associations. These organizations provide a space for youth to assemble and pursue collective goals revolving around the development of youth in the country. They do this by organizing student governments that assemble and vote, fundraising for issues in community, and volunteering. Our goal is that Ascend Alumni will operate in this manner by being a place for graduates of our Academy to continue organizing and making a difference.

Ascend Alumni is not a program that was developed by our board. It was born in the actions of former Ascend Academy students organizing themselves and volunteering. Last year we kept getting reports about how Ascend Alumni would show up and volunteer to help run practices, tutoring sessions, tournaments, and even participating in brainstorming strategy and logistics with our wonderful Director, Alhagie Manjang, who would guide them during these sessions. After reading these reports and listening to exit interviews we knew that Ascend Alumni was already a thing in our community and it was our job to make it official.

The goals of Ascend Alumni are to give a space for our former Academy students to organize, fundraise, volunteer, and pursue their own initiatives. We are excited to see what they come up with.

Ascend Together currently operates from St. Therese's Upper Basic School

Past site locations include:

Kotu Senior Secondary

Bakau Basketball Academy

St. Peters Upper Basic School

COVID forced us to consolidate down to just one site. It is our goal to bring our program to multiple sites.

Professional Team

2025/26 will be the first season that Ascend will register a team with the Gambian Basketball Association’s Tier 2 league. Our hope is that this team will be a place for Ascend Alumni to continue pursuing their basketball dreams and that with development the team will be able to join the Tier 1 league, the highest level of basketball in the country. We would also like to use this team as a more visible arm of Ascend that can engage with the community in a format outside school systems.