Life in northern Cameroon, including my town Bamenda, has been marred with violent conflicts leading to increasing social and economic challenges. Human rights are violated, the economy disrupted, and infrastructure, education, and healthcare services have been strained by the ongoing political conflicts. Since 2016 our communities in the Northwest and Southwest have been affected by the ongoing Anglophone Crisis which results in difficult living conditions for people. Our city, Bamenda, is at the heart of this conflict area.
Tackling Hunger with Asset Based Community Development
In my role as the president of the Community Green Engagement initiative, I work with neighbors in my community to tackle one of the major issues communities face during these challenging times—hunger and poverty. Informed by my experience from the Gather course, I am applying what I learned about the Asset Based Community Development approach to find solutions for our problems. While most social services are strained, we still have land and strong community cohesion as our greatest assets. With that, we are working on sustaining ourselves by growing food and helping Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs ) with farms to grow food.
In our new initiative, we are providing maize seedlings and farms to Internally Displaced Women to grow food and potentially sell any extra crops for income. Thanks to our generous friends in the Goldin Institute Network, we have secured cassava seedlings and three groups of 21 marginalized women are now involved in the project. They have planted 800 seedlings in three different farms. While growing cassava seedlings takes time, nearly a year before harvest, it will go a long way in our future plans to save and multiply the seedlings and continue to support more IDPs.
The women involved in this new initiative have been sending messages of appreciation to us and our friends in the Goldin Institute network for support. Below are some messages from them:
I would like to appreciate and thank Goldin Institute Chicago so much and especially Maxwell for this wonderful initiative. We are very grateful for the cassava hybrid seedlings. — Melanie Swirri, Chomba Women farming group, Cameroon.
I’m very happy with Goldin Institute Chicago for the cassava seedlings. I will use the cassava from the seedlings to produce Garri for sale and use the money to pay my children’s school fees — Winifred Abia, Chomba Women Farming group, Cameroon.
