Emergency Supplies to Save Cameroon from COVID-19

As COVID-19 spreads quickly in Cameroon, many people in the country are constantly living in fear and insecurity. With suboptimal health care conditions, the country may soon face terrible consequences. 

Our project - Cameroon Unites Against COVID-19 Project - will mainly take place in rural and urban areas across Northwest Cameroon, distributing educational materials (flyers, posters, T-shirts, posters) as well as personal protective equipment (soap, hand sanitizer, cloth mask) to 1,000 people.

COVID-19 pandemic is a matter of life and death. Therefore, a quick response and coordinated approach are highly needed to save the lives of people in Cameroon during this turbulent time. Hence, we have come up with reasonable solutions to address the issues outlined above: distributing bar soaps, cloth masks, and hand sanitizers to protect people at risk and sharing reliable information through educational flyers, posters, street banners, and T- shirts via both offline and online platforms.

COVID-19 AWARENESS AND OUTREACHING OF PREVENTIVE MATERIALS IN SCHOOLS

Schools in Cameroon are being faced with safety risks for the young people that attend. There are many students being targeted only on the basis of wanting to go to school and nearly 600,000 are prevented from doing so. In 2019, nearly 80% of Cameroonian schools were closed due to violence.^[1]Many young girls that drop out of school are at a higher chance of being sexually assaulted.^[2]Furthermore, without being in the safety of a school environment, young girls are more likely to be “recruited by armed groups or abducted”.^[3]

Unfortunately, the effects of COVID-19 are worsening these situations for students in Cameroon. The first two positive cases of COVID-19 in Cameroon were identified on 6 March 2020. Since then, COVID-19 has been spreading across Cameroon with 7,000,000 children being affected by school closures.^[4]As COVID-19 restrictions have been put in place and schools have closed, many young people have less of an opportunity to access a safe learning environment.  

However, with schools beginning to reopen, the Cameroonian government has put social distancing and safety measures into place. Yet not everyone has access to supplies (masks, hand sanitizer, etc.)and still and some are getting arrested just for passing out necessities.^[5]Due to safety measures, only about half of the students have returned to school.^[6]Furthermore, some teachers and students say although the government has promised to take safety measures, “Some classes and lecture halls were congested and there was lack of water and soap to wash hands in some establishments”, making even less students able to attend.^[7]

Teachers with knowledge and materials to fight against the spread of COVID-19 in the school milieu and community in Cameroon.

In our efforts to support both students and teachers in schools and the community, we developed a project proposal aimed at empowering pupils, students and community.

We got appeals from parents and children in Bamenda and OKU in the conflict affected regions of Cameroon, to come to their aid with both knowledge and preventive materials against COVID19.

 We immediately set up a team of UN volunteers who helped in setting up an online fundraising campaign on GlobalGiving.

Some few weeks later some funds were raised from GlobalGiving and the amount was disbursed into our bank account.

Intensive preparations started in the month of September and the implementation of the project proper began in ending September.

The project was implemented in Oku in Bui Division North West Region Cameroon and Bamenda in Mezam Division North West Region Cameroon.

Project preparatory meeting were held in Oku and Bamenda with school authorities, teachers and community members, to select the beneficiary schools taking into consideration that the project was funded partially.

The main criteria for the choice of the schools and community was the interest and appeal that was manifested by the schools and community

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The project had as objectives the following

• To aid in making schools a safe place by providing supplies (masks, hand sanitizer, etc.) and offering techniques to create a COVID-19 safe classroom
• To educate youth about ways to stop the spread of COVID-19 by providing them with an example of socially distanced and hygienic spaces
• To spread this education beyond the classroom through young people taking their knowledge and spreading it to their families and communities by passing out the leaflets, encouraging others to listen to the radio podcasts, and describing their experiences in a COVID-19 safe environment.
• To support some vulnerable kids and their families with food items to combat hunger.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY

• Once we got information of the availability of funding for the project, we started the preparations.
• We requested interested volunteers and staffs to indicate their availability to support the implementation of the project. Four staffs and three volunteers were shortlisted to offer a helping hand in the implementation of the project. The team received a short training on COVID-19 by one of our resource persons.
• The different preventive materials like facemask, soap, hand sanitizers, bucket with taps and food items were procured from the local market.
• The beneficiary schools and communities were informed of the dates of the workshops and distribution of preventive materials.

We had already chosen our beneficiaries schools which included, government primary school Manchock Oku, government primary school Elak Oku, Government primary school Kiyong , Mark Dreden Inclusive primary and secondary schools in Mankon Bamenda.

Short refresher training sessions were organized for teachers prior to the sessions with the students and pupils. Students and pupils were assembled in front of the school yard, in respect of social distancing during the presentations. Practical lessons on proper hand washing, social distancing and wearing of face mask was demonstrated by the facilitators of the workshops.

Buckets with running tap, face masks, hand sanitizers and soap was distributed to the students and pupils after the presentations. The students and pupils were satisfied with the knowledge they have learned from the presentations and promised to implement and respect the barrier measures and to share the knowledge with their peers and family members back home. They pleaded for more facemasks, since they have to stay in school for five days during the week and will find it very challenging using just a single face mask within five days.

^[1]https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2019/07/24/cameroon-education-has-become-victim-war

^[2]https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2019/07/24/cameroon-education-has-become-victim-war

^[3]https://reliefweb.int/report/cameroon/thousands-children-out-school

^[4]https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/UNICEF%20Cameroon%20COVID-19%20%20Situation%20Report%20No.%206%20-%2017%20April%202020.pdf

^[5]https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/14/covid-19-brings-out-governments-ugly-side-cameroon

^[6]http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-06/02/c_139105960.htm

^[7]https://www.voanews.com/africa/cameroon-opens-schools-amid-covid-19-spike