MBONWEH

Mbonweh women realized that the children of poor families are the most underprivileged. Many of these children cannot complete the full primary school course. Most school drop-outs, delinquents, street children and abused children become youths in crisis: prostitutes, drug addicts and bandits.

As part of their commitment to the education of children and youths from poor homes, in the year 2001, a group of Mbonweh women created the Unique Primary School and care home in Batoke, within the Fako coastal region. The school was built to serve the local community who had no access to affordable quality education. It is founded on a ‘child-centered’ ethos, where class sizes are kept at low levels (max. of 35 pupils), and the fees are less than half of what a government run school would charge. Many of these children’s mothers are Mbonweh women.

In 2004, the school received funding from the British High Commission and the German Embassy which enabled the management to complete two blocks of classes. This project has also received major assistance from international volunteers, especially Mrs. Wendy Saker who founded the Child Sponsorship Programme and Miss Merit Heitanen who in 2007 greatly improved the child sponsorship program by enrolling 53 children who otherwise could have never attended basic primary education. This project’s appreciation also goes to other volunteers such as Miss Laura Johnston, Miss Helen Bishop, and Miss Jenny Zaidi whose assistance will remain in the history of the project.

The project is providing high quality basic education to a underprivileged children and youths in the 12 villages of the West Coast communities of Limbe. A vocational department has been created and the women are searching for funding partners to make this grow bigger.

No fewer than 160,000 people have fled to neighbouring Nigeria, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), while in the south-west region alone, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that 246,000 people have been internally displaced. In the south-west region (where most of the fighting has taken place), entire communities have been razed by fire, leaving locals desperate for shelter and safety.

Most internally displaced families have abandoned their homes, seeking shelter in nearby bush land or safer parts of the country. In some cases, women have been abandoned by their husbands who have joined the restoration forces. As a result, approximately 68 per cent of Cameroon’s IDPs are said to be women.

As those displaced primarily live in rural areas and depend on farming for sustenance and income, the fact that it is no longer safe for most women to access their fields has had a devastating impact on local communities.“I was not able to harvest the groundnut I planted on a large parcel of land during the last planting season due to the fighting,” Patricia Anyewa , a rural woman in Fontem, south-west Cameroon tells MWDA staff. She says feeding her five children and grandson is only possible thanks to food donations made by local NGOs. “I have been scared to go to the farm. My farm is close to the road, along the Kumba road in Ekona highway. At times, soldiers making use of this road shoot sporadically before continuing to their destination,” she says.

Women and girls in conflict-hit areas are also struggling to get access to medicine and menstrual hygiene products. While some have resorted to using age-old methods like plants, rags and locally-made pads, others rely on the few pads donated by aid organizations

As schools, hospitals and entire villages are destroyed (mostly by government forces), the educational prospects of a generation of young people are being affected. Girls who cannot attend school are particularly at risk, as they become prone to early pregnancy, Pregnant or lactating women in the region currently have no access to basic health services and are at significant risk of water-borne diseases because they are forced to drink from contaminated sources. There have also been reports of some armed separatist groups forcing young girls to leave their families and join their ranks to help with cooking and other chores.

MWDA has been working with UN-IOM and OCHA to asses the needs of these vulnerable people and put in place strategies for meaningful assistance to women and children.