Build 100 Young Change Makers in Cameroon

Thank you for your support, thanks to your donation this July and August 2017 Reach Out Cameroon organized the Youth Engagement Program. We hope from this report you get an idea of everything that happened thanks to you.

The program can be divided in three core topics, health, future and citizenship.

Under health participants were schooled on:

Sexual reproductive Health and Rights, the modes of transmission and the prevention of HIV/AIDS and STIs, reasons to say no to stigma and discrimination, the basics of their sexuality as well the risks of early sexual intercourse.

Also, 65 female participants were also coached on menstruation and menstrual hygiene

Under Future:

Participants were motivated and encourage by Mr. Simo Pierre the coordinator Sarah Etonge’s Foundation to develop and discover their talent. Mr. Simo Pierre has won several championships as an athlete. “I come from a very poor family of seven children. When I was young I felt in love with my mother’s talent of running, so I wanted to do the same. It was not easy at the start, everybody is bigger than you. I finished last, then the next race second to the last. I worked on the skill and by the age of 14years I started winning trophies. This made me to train more. By the time was in university I was on scholarship and my family did not spend anything for my education till I found myself in a professional school of sports and physical education.” We want to thank Sarah Etonge Foundation for their collaboration one more year.

Children were also drilled on entrepreneurship, how to draw business ideas, estimate profits, identify problems and create business solutions. The best business plan got a prize. It was “Boiled Egg and Pepper” “What was interesting about Amah [The winner, a 14 year old girl] was, her strategy to track her customers, how to combine business and studies, keeping records of expenditure and profit and most important her vision in the next three years. She was prudent and very realistic about her business, and word is, she has started doing it! (You might wonder if this affect her school, we are sad to say that for more than a year now there is no school in the South-West Region of Cameroon due to a political conflict in Anglophone Cameroon)

Also under this module creative thinking was explored. The younger group through this exercise came up with a drama Gender Based Violence (specifically breast ironing a malpractice still existing in some communities of Cameroon) which was acted in the closing ceremony. We orientated the children and they came up with the argument (based on the topics of past lessons), the characters and the plot.

Still within this module, participants were coached of the on ICT and internet usage. For many of them, it was the first time to touch a computer, we had 8 lessons on IT, I have to confess we had never seen them so quiet and concentrated before. This was in collaboration with Njaka, a young NGO dedicated to making coding accessible to children and teens of any background and our ICT volunteer, a computer engineer working with the Ministry of Public Health.

Under Citizenship:

Select staff of Reach Out developed lessons on the topics we usually work for, stopping gender based violence, becoming an agent of change in our communities and conflict management.

Also under this module, after drilled on the contribution for a better community, the participants came with a small project “Eliminate mosquitoes, kick Malaria out of Tole”. To implement this they agreed to fill all pot holes and clear the bushes of some neighborhood of the host community of the program. They had leaders and divided tasks, and by the end of it they had covered 40 potholes and cleared roughly 100 square meters (*they calculate in “parcels” so this number is not really exact).

The Youth Engagement Program this year was a success. The number of participants who register stood at 120 as oppose to 98 for 2016, and because we took into consideration the recommendations and challenges from the participants, parents and facilitators, the lessons and out doors activities were tailored to the needs and interests of participants, and were met with a high level of satisfaction and greater impact.

At the end we had a closing ceremony where 30 prizes were given (best business plan, best artist..) and basic educational support was received by all participants.

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