Empower Higher Education for Scholars in Cameroon

It's another great opportunity to reach out with words of thanks to you all who make our work possible through donations. Last summer was extra-ordinary; not only did we have more experts participating in our summer academy - we also did the best selection of students, refined the curriculum and re-started our program in Bamenda, Cameroon, a zone we had left in hibernation due to the armed struggle that had rocked the region since late 2016. In total, 50 young Cameroonians at the level of the high school benefitted from the very intensive summer training program, which ran programs from entrepreneurial leadership to community volunteering and technological solutions challenge (hackathons). Today, most of the scholars are engaged in their applications to college while a handful of that number already got full scholarships to top universities within Africa and the rest of the world.

During the summer, there were several community-immersion programs during which Open Dreams Scholars had a chance to volunteer while honing their leadership skills.

Particularly;

- alongside "Game Changers", a community-based organization, they took part in "Climate Action" activities which involved planting trees, cleaning up the communities and carrying out education on the preservation of the environment;

- they took part in a Technology Innovation Challenge, which brought together young tech geniuses from across Cameroon to pitch their startups, learn how to upgrade their prototypes etc. They also enrolled into a tech mentorship program that is planned to run for years;

- they organized, for university students, a tech competition titled "PremierDev Technology Solution Challenge". This challenge entailed exposing technology solutions they had designed to tackle local community challenges. Several groups of students from universities across the country participated. A 6 week boot camp later followed. This is one of the independent initiatives led by Open Dreams Scholars, who have benefit from leadership opportunities offered by the Open Dreams mentorship program;

- Open Dreams Scholars reached out with assistance in books and handouts to internally displaced students within the country, encouraging them to return to school. This operation was conducted in three regions in Cameroon, with over 300 students benefitting from enough material to go to school for a whole academic year.

- Open Dreams Scholars organized 3 week skills-development programs to 150 internally displaced young females, empowering them to engage in socio-economic activities which keep them safe and less vulnerable to exploitation from the society.

- we had partnerships with new institutions among them the Ashinaga Africa Initiative and most recently 'special consultative status’ with the UN's Economic and Social Council.

- we support and continue to support more dreamers by hosting them in our Yaoundé center, where we provide safe spaces for them to continue to pursue their dreams. We pay particular attention to young girls who have been excelling at Open Dreams, and doing exceedingly well in the STEM programs.

We have conquered new grounds, with scholars going into universities we had no scholars there before. More graduate scholars are getting great opportunities – medical doctors are leading in this professional development endeavor.

This December, we plan to re-organize Open Dreams to create more room for committees in which scholars put their leadership to work through volunteering. We continue to seek more funding for our growing programs and outreach which has seen greater community dependence on our programs. Thank you all for making the work possible through your generous donations, for which we are extremely grateful. We are truly indebted to you. We hope to continue to cover more grounds. Thank you for your unrelenting support. Together, we broaden our support base, as we continue our mission to equalize access to educational opportunities for community impact

A few months back, the Covid-19 pandemic created an enormous scare and shut down many of our traditional channels of education and operations. This placed quite some strain on our resources and programs. With determination to sail through the tides with our heads up, we embraced distance education technology, took basic hygienic measures, upgraded our Internet bandwidth accommodating more students taking online classes at our center while also hosting some of them for long periods of time. We also empowered units of Open Dreams Across Cameroon at the regional levels to reach out to those in grave situation and provide mentorship and educational support, reviving and sustaining hope for the future. The field operations were very successful. We forged partnerships with other organizations and the working atmosphere has been excellent this far.

We continue to support high-achieving low-income Open Dreams Scholars, assisting them with mentorship and cost related to establishing passports, taking tests, paying university application fee, travel and feeding for those moving to the Open Dreams Center to complete their applications or take standardized tests etc. Over the past three months, 21 Open Dreams Scholars have been awarded scholarships to study their dream programs in some of the top universities across the world. In all, scholarship funding for their programs from institutions exceeds $400,000.

We have also stepped up social programs, reaching out to IDPs and providing training to empower young girls and aspiring dreamers to a level where they can then continue with the relay baton. Over 50 people who fall in this category have directly benefited from skill-acquisition programs through our scholars.

Last April 2021, we hosted two major national tech events, which brought budding tech geniuses from secondary, high schools and universities to pitch their projects, gain training and also gain some seed funding. The events were organized by Open Dreams Scholars with the full support of Open Dreams. We also deeply participated in many other external events including the World Environment Day Events, Commonwealth day celebrations etc where we contributed in some way (financially, materially and academically) to make the day colorful.

At this point, almost all of our dedicated 2020 Scholars have got scholarships. We are opening up space to recruit more scholars for a summer boot camps that run from July 19th 2021 to August 30th 2021. This time, we are targeting the hometown of Open Dreams in Cameroon - Bamenda, where operations were suspended last year and our center when into hibernation due to the fragile social climate in that area. Hence, we shall run the boot camp in Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon and the regional headquarters of the North West, Bamenda. Besides that, we are also following up and participating in other parallel programs run in Yaoundé and Buea in partnership with other organizations, one of them a holidy reading camp. All these programs are empowering the youth and helping them realize their dreams to become successful citizens, in line with the SDGs.

These achievements would not be possible without your constant support. Thank you for standing by us and for making it happen in the lives of many young dreamers. We count on your support to assist in human capital development and building resilience for rapid reactions to global challenges like the Covid-19 pandemic.