By Glory M. Lueong | Project Leader
During the the April 2013 open challenge on Globalgiving, 1,030 US dollars were disbursed to our account for the excecution of our project "Sponsor 200 female orphans to school in Cameroon". However, due to currency exchange fluctuations, we received 438,000FCFA which is equivalent to 877.381 USD(according to today's 21.07.13 exchange rate).
With this amount, we were able to provide 18 sponsorships to orphans in Boyo Division of the NorthWest region of Cameroon. In total, we gave out 8 full tri-package sponsorships(school fees, educational materials, and a livestock) to orphans in Fundong and 10 partial school materials sponsorships to orphans in Njinikom, Boyo Division of the North West Region of Cameroon where matrillinear succession is stripping off properties, livelihoods, hopes and futures from orphans and widows. In addition to these, we organised a reproductive health education lecture session for teenage female orphans.We are very grateful to our wonderful and lovely donors. Your donation went a long way to touch the lives of girls like Faith and Anthalia whose stories we briefly tell in this report.
Faith (11yrs), the young orphan in blue (picture 1 below) lost her father, the family's bread winner in a fatal car accident early in June.While still struggling with the pain and trauma of losing her father(who died infront of her), the trouble of succession and property inheritance set in and she began to lose hope of sustainably pursuing her education. She wondered if she will ever become the Mathematics teacher that she always dreamed of becoming in the future. Thanks to the generous support of our donors, Faith will resume school this September and will hopefull pursue her career goal!!
Anthalia's (14years) case is even more painful than Faith's own. Anthalia who lost her faither three years back found herself in prison after their successor alledgely chased them out of their compound, locked the doors and forbade them from accessing their late father's property as well as siezed their birth certificates. In a struggle for accomodation and survival, Anthalia dropped out from secondary school and went on to be sleeping in an uncompleted and abandoned house in the bush. A few months after, Anthalia could not longer stand begging and went on to steal pepper from a nearby garden to sell and join her mother in the city where she rented to stay after being chased from her compound by the successor of her husband. Curiously, Anthalia's mother, the widow had again been chased away by her land lady because she had accumulated 2years of rents trying to use the money to educate Anthalia's siblings. In this mess, both remained stranded but Anthalia's act earned her a term in prison until the RuWCED team went to Fundong to excecute the"sponsor 200 female orphans in Cameroon project" which kind donors like you sponsored. Anthalia's case was presented to us by a good willed forestry expert who also works for the Boyo community radio and had written about the case (a copy of which is attached below). With the help of your donations, we could pay the needed court charges to withdraw the case( a copy of which is attached below). With these charges paid, the good willed reporter in the name of Mr.Appolinair persuaded the complainer to withdraw the case so as to enable Anthalia go back to school. Your donations also helped us to pay for part of her school needs. However, she does not yet have a place to stay (because we could not afford to pay for her rents). It is our desire to provide accomodation for her, her mother and other siblings who also dropped out from school after the death of their father.
Dear Donors, once more, thank you. Anthalia, Faith, and others sent a big thank you from Boyo Division-Cameroon. They pleaded that lovely people like you should continue to stand with them.
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