Introduction
The UK Gambia Mission started with husband and wife, Derrick and Shirley Eubank. After a brief holiday in Gambia in 2019, they were inspired by God’s love to help and support people living in the most deprived communities in The Gambia. The mission work in Gambia is a response to the call to take action to help and support the less fortunate.
Derrick Eubank
Derrick is passionate about life, health and supporting individuals make the essential connections between spiritual vitality, healing, recovery, and holistic wellbeing. As a mental health chaplain and fitness coach within the NHS, Derrick provides spiritual care, health and fitness, awareness and education to adult patients suffering with acute mental health conditions.
Derrick combines the wealth of his lived experience with over 30 years in the health and fitness industry as a therapist, trainer, and coach. In 2009, he joined the NHS Mental Health Service as a Clinical Exercise Therapist whilst continuing his professional and academic studies which led to him gaining his Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Physical Rehabilitation.
Apart from his personal satisfaction and fulfilment from leading the mission, he considers his greatest honour and most challenging and rewarding experience was caring for his late parents, both in their late nineties.
Derrick and Shirley’s daughter is also involved in the mission work and has visited The Gambia with their four grandchildren during the successful 2022 Mission Holiday.
Shirley Eubank
Shirley is a retired nurse with a great wealth of knowledge, skills, and experience in health and wellbeing. She worked in the NHS for 30 years, both as a practising midwife in a busy teaching hospital for 17 years and as a health visitor within a multicultural community for 13 years. She also holds a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
She has her personal story of how embracing a healthy holistic lifestyle coupled with her steadfast faith in God has helped her to overcome cancer.
Shirley loves to travel and has been to many countries mainly in Europe and the Caribbean, but never Africa until 2018 when she visited The Gambia for the first time. The first visit to The Gambia was a pivotal point in her life, she said it was a “journey of discovery of self, connectedness and belonging; very humbling”.
She loves the Gambian people and has a strong desire to help and support them. Her passion for The Gambia is infectious, so much so that 28 individuals came along on the first mission holiday trip in 2020.
She desires to travel the African continent to see and experience as many countries as possible, starting with West Africa. Shirley plays a significant role in the UK Gambian Mission dealing with administration, accounts, and travel. She is truly enjoying the new role and is extremely grateful to be given this wonderful opportunity to use her knowledge and experience not only to support the Gambian people, but also to family, friends, and colleagues who like to give their support and have the opportunity to experience the culture, heritage, and reconnection to the Motherland.