By Marc Serna | Wealth Creation Department
Dear Donors,
It’s been 3 months since our last report and this is what has been happening:
Evaluation Meeting
It's always good to stop for a minute and reflect. There are many community actors, local groups and associations as well as government and traditional authorities, who are crucial to the success of our project. This is why this July we had an Evaluation Meeting with all the stakeholders relevant to the project. We had members of the delegations of the ministries of Women Empowerment, Social Affairs and Vocational Training, as well as the representative of the Chief of Tole, the CEO of Community Health Foundation (an NGO based directly in Tole), 3 women groups, the Manager of Tole Credit Union with whom we started a very fruitful partnership (Innovation Challenge, you will get to know more about it soon) and of course, two of our girls, Gilian and Mary, who gave their testimonies of struggle and success.
The community members resolved to help the project in any way possible (Selection and follow-up) and the government representatives were very interested on complementing it with their own programs (facilitating training spaces and experts).
You can find attached to this report a word document with the materials handed out in the meeting, it’s a good opportunity to catch up on the project and its background!
Second grant disbursement
After following up with the first 15 grantees supported in March this August we decided to support 7 of them. Those are the ones who we are ready to support right now, given their availability and constancy in their business, we had a good number of them (5) who temporarily travelled to other locations and could not be regularly followed-up but are doing great with their businesses, these ones will be supported eventually. Sadly two did not do well and are not being collaborative, so we need to move on. But that is exactly why we set up this system of two grants, so more of your money is spent on those who are not only in need, but in the disposition of multiplying your donations 100 times.
These were Carine, who is going back to school with the money she is making with her saloon, Renata, who is doing great selling eru (local vegetable), Solange who sells clothes in the market and now wants to try School Bags, Kum, who is also a market seller but wants to buy a fridge and move to a more ambitious business (making juices and yogurt), Elekta, who is doing so great we started a microproject for her (https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/supporting-elekta-to-become-self-reliant/ ), Constance, a farmer now owning her own peanut farm and Isabella, who is now feeding half of the taxi drivers of Tole with her rice & beans business.
Florian’s Testimony.
Between July and September 2016 I took part in a major Microfinance Project of Reach Out Cameroon called 'Keep a Girl Alive'. The major emotions to describe my experiences during this period were first 'surprise' which was later replaced to 'convinced'. Why was I surprised and why did the program convince me? First of all I was surprised by the efficiency of the initiative. Reach Out Cameroon is very well connected in the community of Tole where the activities are taking place. I assumed that microfinance is just about giving money, but Reach Out defines microfinance as tracking the effective spending of the money very carefully. During my first month I visited almost every KGA beneficiary at least twice. We carried out 1 on 1 training sessions on bookkeeping, business development and further consultation. We also targeted the community with an Innovation Challenge and the Youth Engagement Program which gave us all together synergies and a greater impact on empowering ‘our KGA girls’. This description should show already, that we don’t see them as numbers we rather see them as part of the Reach Out Cameroon Family in which we take care of each other. The high density of activities carried out within the program itself but also connected to other synergies ‘convinced’ me of our Keep a girl alive program. It convinced me because I saw that it aims at a major program at the right time and with the right method. I am sure that Reach Out Cameroon will continue this way of tracking activities carefully to achieve the highest impact out of any donations. Keep a girl alive program does not only empower women in the right way, it also helps them to smile again because they know that they are part of the family.
Thelma
Thelma is the daugther of one of the girls supported, she is 7 and looking forward to start her 3rd year in Buea School for the Deaf to continue with her education and learning sign language. She is even teaching it to her mother! If you want to know more about her story follow the link.
https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/send-thelma-to-deaf-school-1/
We are looking for first donations that can give visibility and catapult her in front of more and more possible donors, the first 10 dollars are not only 10 dollars, but much more.
Next month you will get to know about the Innovation Challenge and more details about the progress your girls are making!
Thank you for everything you have done!
By Marc Serna | Wealth Creation Department
By Marc Serna | Wealth Creation Department
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