Gender Equality Cameroon Project #9133

Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

by Reach Out NGO

Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

Project Report | Mar 11, 2019
Melvis

By Sylvie Ebitoh | Project Coordinator

Melvis during market day

It was another challenging season for our participants as some of them were at the verge of losing everything due to the Anglophone crisis. Some businesses could not survive the conflict, while some have persevered all throughout this period. Most of the participants had to change their businesses. Overall, the period was not a favorable one as their average profits dropped by roughly 20%. But despite this situation, our participants are still defying all odds and making a living by themselves.

Melvis has been with us since March 2018. She sells fresh vegetables like pepper, onion, okra and tomatoes. She did not move during this year, while the conflict was escalating, but rather stayed back and continued with her business. Despite receiving threats from the military she didn’t want to move. She was accused of being the one feeding the guerilla.

As the conflict grew more and more violent and most people abandoned Tole, (August 2018) her store became one of the few ones in the village. She gained more customers and had to increase her supplies. At the point where the heat began cooling down a bit, Melvis had gained a larger market. During that period she made a profit of 194,700frs (roughly 400$) with a loan of 60,000 francs we gave her during that period. Nobody else would have given her credit in such an area and period, but that’s why your support is so important.

Melvis determination encouraged the rest. Besides the store, she has also created a small bar where she sells the local drink (palm wine). She dedicated a lot of time on both her businesses and while others were scared of investing their money, she took the risk and grew her business to where it is today. She was able to pay back the loan in a period of one month and took another for 120.000frs. She was admired by many. She is focused, push-pull and she is always available for follow-ups and does bookkeeping every day. She desires to see her children being educated and to live a comfortable life some day.

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Dec 10, 2018
December Report

By Sylvie Ebitoh, Levai Pensiga, Atem Akonjang | Volunteers

Disbursement of 2nd and 3rd level grants.

Dear donors,

Thank you very much for what you have done so far for us and for the young women participating in the Keep a Girl Alive project.

While the situation all over Anglophone Cameroon is dramatic, with more than 400,000 persons internally displaced and daily casualties, our current project area calmed down a bit in the past two months. With hostilities between the two sides kept to a minimum, most project participants are slowly coming back. We closed the year supporting 43 of them with new business grants. A part of the grant was fixed, another part depended on how much they have saved throughout the year, as a "savings incentive".

These are the impressions of our volunteers and staff:

Sylvie Ebitoh: “So far it has been a challenging moment getting the beneficiaries together. The period has been a testing one for them, but still, most still push through to see that their businesses stay alive. A training on entrepreneurship was carried out, one at Reach Out’s office for those staying in Buea, Tiko and Limbe and one in Tole, in our field office. The program was the following:

Refresh Bookkeeping concepts.
Discussion on savings and its benefits
Business challenges and brainstorming on solutions
Drafting basic Business plans
Health talk on HIV/AIDS
Disbursement of 50.000FRS grants to beneficiaries
Disbursement of savings of 2018 plus saving incentives.
Recommendations

Levai Pensiga “The training was very educative and interesting for me as a new volunteer. I had the opportunity to interact with young women-at-risk. It was so exciting getting to know new things concerning bookkeeping too, which was something new to me. I could see how they can keep daily records of their income and expenditure. Everyone was amazed when one of the girls (Elizabeth) had a clean, uninterrupted, record of her business from 2016 to the present date. The interaction with the girls showed me that they understand issues of finances, and they are very open-minded. Everyone was very supportive, the collaboration from the participants made me more confident during the training.

The women were very happy with the exercise on savings. It had short lessons about how to save, the importance of saving and the benefits participants can have after saving with Reach Out. Many of the girls could even testify about the benefits of savings. As planned, we shared a pot of about 1,000 $ between all beneficiaries who saved, in a manner proportional to the amounts saved. The best of them was Blandine, who went home with her savings and a substantial grant, altogether almost 300$. When she got the news she almost collapsed out of excitement. Participants went home even more eager to start saving next 2019.”

Atem Akonjang “Since I was introduced to the Keep a Girl Alive project, It has been a wonderful experience. The life experiences shared by the beneficiaries in the field and the level of commitment showed by the girls are very inspiring and motivate one to have a passion for working. Nothing is satisfactory to me like when I see smiles on people’s face which come as a result of capacity building. Working on this project has been a ‘dream come true’.

As of now, the impact of this project can be visibly seen in the lives of its beneficiaries. It will be of great importance if such opportunities could be scaled-up out to other women in more communities, without forgetting the present beneficiaries.”

With this, we close 2018, a year where we helped as 123 young women to move out of extreme poverty and create permanent sources of income for themselves. We hope you have an amazing 2019.

Thank you very much.

Marie

training

Nancy

training in Buea Office

Violet

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Sep 17, 2018
The conflict escalates but we continue working

By Marc Serna | interim Head of Department - Wealth Creation

Anna

Dear Donors,

As you might know, Cameroon is on the verge of a civil war. As the conflict escalates, our project undergoes major changes.

More than half of our girls have moved out of Tole, which is a high-risk area right now.

Some of them have moved out of the South-West Region altogether.

Of course, all their businesses are affected by the crisis, and they need to come up with new strategies to survive. Some are not succeeding and their profits are quite low.

It has become dangerous for us to come to Tole to meet regularly with the girls. We apply tight security protocols and stay there for only briefs periods of time.

Casualties are directly affecting us, and them. Community stakeholders we used to relate with, such as members of the village council, have been assassinated. At least one of our girls lost her life-partner to the indiscriminate shooting.

We have halted any distribution of grants for now.

However,

Even in this horrible war and climate of continuous displacement, the vast majority of girls are still doing business (85.7%)

Because the project execution followed the schedule, we had already engaged the 80 new girls we planned to help this year before it became too hot. We just have pending one last round of grants for 40 girls who are doing well after receiving their first grant. This will happen in November, after the high-intensity period of October has passed. (October 1st will commemorate the unification of the two Cameroons. October 7th will see elections in Cameroon. Elections are being boycotted by the separatist forces fighting the government. Major displacement has taken place in the past few days in preparation for the conflict coming to Buea).

We are able to keep going to the field. The new non-state armed groups are not hostile to us, because the community knows us and respects us. We have been helping their young women for long. We are still in danger of being caught in the crossfire, but we have been able to keep operating.

We helped 13 internally displaced women who ran away from war and had their houses burnt in July who joint this project. Now in September, we can say we are supporting more than 60 displaced women. More than half of our active girls are currently displaced, but we manage to see them in their current locations or to follow-up through phone calls.

So you are also contributing to mitigate this horrible conflict. Thank you, we need all the help we can get. The international community has not yet stepped up and we are trying to slow down something that is way bigger than us.

We are not giving up, and they are not giving up either. Thank you for being there.

Elizabeth sells farming inputs during rainy season

Julie just relocated, but we keep in touch.

Mabel has decided to stay and just be careful

"Even if it gets hot, I will sell from my house."

Charity changed business. "My clients have left."

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