The Marlborough Brandt Group (MBG) is one of the oldest community links in the world. Set up in 1981, we connect the people of Marlborough in the UK and the surrounding area with the people of Gunjur in The Gambia, West Africa. To read more about our history click here.

We are a volunteer run charity with a mirror community group in Gunjur called the Gunjur Community Link and work in close partnership with a Gambian NGO we helped establish in 1997 called TARUD (Trust Agency for Rural Development).

Since 2017 MBG has focused on linking trips and achieving its development objectives through grants to the many other charities that now opperate in Gunjur thanks to the link. We facilitate a range of student and adult community trips to work in partnership with volunteers in Gunjur on community projects, and give grants to other charities based on the ground in Gunjur to fund health, eduction, employability and micro-finance initiatives. The MBG strategy and impact can be read in our latest annual reports here. If you are interested in going to Gunjur, or would like to apply for funding to support development work in the community there please contact info@mbg.org.

What we do

• We exchange people between the communities of Marlborough and Gunjur, including students, adults and professionals.

• In collaboration with TARUD, we support development and sustainability programmes in Gunjur and more widely in The Gambia by contributing financial and human resources.

• We help to facilitate and fund opportunities for other specialist organisations to be involved in development programmes in The Gambia, such as Project Gambia and Disability Africa.

• We encourage the engagement of politicians in international development through bringing candidates for UK and European elections to meetings prior to the elections to discuss their attitudes to international development. In 2013 local MP Claire Perry stayed in Gunjur for one week witnessing the impact of a long established link at first hand.

• We collaborate with the Gambian community in Bristol to support and validate our work, contributing to a more cohesive society and regularly networking with the Kombo Sillah Association.

• We deliver an annual Lent Lecture to bring issues concerning global poverty and international development to as wide a constituency of people as possible.