Gampel
Encyclopedia
Gampel is a former municipality
Municipalities of Switzerland
Communes , also known as municipalities, are the smallest government division in Switzerland, numbering 2,596 . While many have a population of a few hundred citizens, the largest cities such as Zürich or Geneva also have the legal status of municipalities...

 in the district of Leuk in the canton
Cantons of Switzerland
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848...

 of Valais
Valais
The Valais is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the southwestern part of the country, around the valley of the Rhône from its headwaters to Lake Geneva, separating the Pennine Alps from the Bernese Alps. The canton is one of the drier parts of Switzerland in its central Rhône valley...

 in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

It was an independent municipality until January 1, 2009, when it merged with Bratsch
Bratsch
Bratsch is a village in the municipality of Gampel-Bratsch in the district of Leuk of the canton of Valais in Switzerland.Bratsch was an independent municipality until January 1, 2009, when it merged with Gampel to form Gampel-Bratsch.-History:...

 to form Gampel-Bratsch
Gampel-Bratsch
Gampel-Bratsch is a municipality in the district of Leuk in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It was formed on January 1, 2009. The voters of the municipalities of Gampel and Bratsch decided to merge on January 20, 2008.-History:...

.

Coat of arms

The blazon
Blazon
In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image...

 of the village coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

 is Azure in dexter a Mullet of Six Or in sinister an Increscent inverted Argent in base Coupeaux of the second.

Demographics

Gampel has a population of 1,385.

Most of the population speaks German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 (1,188 or 91.3%) as their first language, Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

 is the second most common (33 or 2.5%) and Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...

 is the third (25 or 1.9%). There are 15 people who speak French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, 22 people who speak Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

.

Of the population in the village 662 or about 50.9% were born in Gampel and lived there in 2000. There were 388 or 29.8% who were born in the same canton, while 65 or 5.0% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 151 or 11.6% were born outside of Switzerland. , there were 547 people who were single and never married in the village. There were 681 married individuals, 50 widows or widowers and 23 individuals who are divorced.

There were 147 households that consist of only one person and 44 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 520 households that answered this question, 28.3% were households made up of just one person and there were 5 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 127 married couples without children, 199 married couples with children There were 23 single parents with a child or children. There were 4 households that were made up of unrelated people and 15 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.

there were 177 single family homes (or 53.5% of the total) out of a total of 331 inhabited buildings. There were 93 multi-family buildings (28.1%), along with 39 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (11.8%) and 22 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (6.6%).

, a total of 474 apartments (70.9% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 167 apartments (25.0%) were seasonally occupied and 28 apartments (4.2%) were empty.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Politics

In the 2007 federal election
Swiss federal election, 2007
Elections to the Swiss Federal Assembly, the federal parliament of Switzerland, were held on Sunday, 21 October 2007. In a few cantons, a second round of the elections to the Council of States was held on 11 November, 18 November, and 25 November 2007...

 the most popular party was the CVP
Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland
The Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland is a Christian democratic political party in Switzerland. It is the fourth-largest party in the National Council, with 31 seats, and the largest in the Council of States, with 15 seats. It has one seat, that of Doris Leuthard, on the Swiss...

 which received 65.42% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP
Swiss People's Party
The Swiss People's Party , also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre , is a conservative political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Toni Brunner, but spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, the party is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of...

 (21.42%), the SP
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 (7.88%) and the FDP
FDP.The Liberals
FDP.The Liberals is a classical liberal political party in Switzerland. It is the joint-largest party in the Federal Council, third-largest party in the National Council, and second-largest in the Council of States....

 (3.95%). In the federal election, a total of 804 votes were cast, and the voter turnout
Voter turnout
Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 84.9%.

Economy

, Gampel had an unemployment rate of 0%. , there were people employed in the primary economic sector and about businesses involved in this sector. No one was employed in the secondary sector or the tertiary sector. There were 645 residents of the village who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 38.9% of the workforce.

the total number of full-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent , is a unit to measure employed persons or students in a way that makes them comparable although they may work or study a different number of hours per week. FTE is often used to measure a worker's involvement in a project, or to track cost reductions in an organization...

 jobs was 408. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 17, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 195 of which 59 or (30.3%) were in manufacturing and 136 (69.7%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 196. In the tertiary sector; 47 or 24.0% were in the sale or repair of motor vehicles, 14 or 7.1% were in the movement and storage of goods, 29 or 14.8% were in a hotel or restaurant, 15 or 7.7% were the insurance or financial industry, 19 or 9.7% were technical professionals or scientists, 28 or 14.3% were in education and 15 or 7.7% were in health care.

, there were 322 workers who commuted into the village and 397 workers who commuted away. The village is a net exporter of workers, with about 1.2 workers leaving the village for every one entering. About 1.9% of the workforce coming into Gampel are coming from outside Switzerland. Of the working population, % used public transportation to get to work, and % used a private car.

Religion

From the , 1,144 or 87.9% were Roman Catholic, while 24 or 1.8% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church
Swiss Reformed Church
The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 18 members of an Orthodox church
Orthodox Christianity
The term Orthodox Christianity may refer to:* the Eastern Orthodox Church and its various geographical subdivisions...

 (or about 1.38% of the population), and there were 16 individuals (or about 1.23% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 60 (or about 4.61% of the population) who were Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic. There were 4 individuals who were Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. 8 (or about 0.61% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 or atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and 35 individuals (or about 2.69% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Gampel about 481 or (37.0%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 109 or (8.4%) have completed additional higher education (either University or a Fachhochschule
Fachhochschule
A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...

). Of the 109 who completed tertiary schooling, 73.4% were Swiss men, 13.8% were Swiss women, 7.3% were non-Swiss men and 5.5% were non-Swiss women.

During the 2010-2011 school year there were a total of 308 students in the Gampel school system. The education system
Education in Switzerland
The education system in Switzerland is very diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the authority for the school system mainly to the cantons...

 in the Canton of Valais allows young children to attend one year of non-obligatory Kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

. During that school year, there 2 kindergarten classes (KG1 or KG2) and 42 kindergarten students. The canton's school system requires students to attend six years of primary school. In Gampel there were a total of 8 classes and 168 students in the primary school. The secondary school
Secondary school
Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...

program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling (orientation classes), followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. There were 140 lower secondary students who attended school in Gampel. All the upper secondary students attended school in another municipality.

, there were 135 students in Gampel who came from another village, while 37 residents attended schools outside the village.
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