Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

Three months have passed since our last report. As the year comes to an end we want to give a special thank you for the four people that continue to be subscribed to a recurrent donation, their support is special as they ensure that even when the program is not receiving new donations, there are running funds that allow us to continue working with our beneficiaries. Also thanks to the recent fundraising efforts (Running for Reach Out) by Melanie Harbinson we are receiving substantial new donations, which will ensure the expansion of the program and enhance your impact to more and more lives changed. We want to inform you about a new aspect of the program we are introducing (the passing on the gift), a summary of our activities for the 16 days of activism to end Violence Against Women and an individual story of the kind of beneficiaries this project supports.

“Passing on the gift”

Two years ago Reach Out started a piggery with support from the Ministry of Small and Medium Sized enterprise and different international benefactors. From time to time, as the business starts to grow stable, we find opportunities to give back to the community. Two months ago a girl was selected in Tole to start her own piggery, she received two piglets and one bag of feed. Two more families are next in line. We decided to support Marie, who you might remember from past reports. Her family has experience rearing pigs in the past (“All my children school fees, it was pigs that paid them” said her mother) but stopped it a few years ago. Now she is the one taking care of the piglets, bathing them and feeding them. There is a hook, after the first breed the family will give us back two piglets, and for the next three years one piglet each time they reproduce, this will expand the program to more families, slowly creating a network of beneficiaries and benefactors. Rearing pigs is a very profitable venture in the South-West Region, Marie has now the capacity to catapult herself out of poverty and we don't have any doubt she will succed with time.

16 days activism.

Reach Out was part of the International 16 days of activism to end violence against women (the period between 25^th November and 10^thDecember, an initiative by the United Nations) and we had talks in schools, organized movie projections and debates, joined forces with other stakeholders in Buea Gender Fair and finally marched with girls and women in Muyuka to demonstrate against all forms of gender based violence. We were amazed particularly at the spirit and concern shown by all these young girls. Talking with them and listening to what they have to say was inspiring. If this is representative of the generation to come, Cameroonian women are heading for a change. You can see a short video of the march here: Reach Out Marching

Rebeca

Rebeca is another victim of those obnoxious (and sadly very common) practices against widows and orphans in Cameroon. Years ago her family was considered middle class, with various simple properties and land. When her father died everything was taken from her mother and the family was cast away. Forced to live in precarious conditions and abandoned by most of her family members, she is struggling to continue her education and care for her family. This year she is enrolled in a technical school. We identified her and offered her to join our program, but at first she looked reluctant, she did not really know what business to do, she had been working all her life but never for herself.

After a while she came back, we went over her options (credit, plantain chips, pastries, boiled egg..) back and forth, and finally she came up with a simple business plan and started selling pastries to her classmates and also selling egg through a local provisions shop. (boiled egg with hot sauce is another typical Cameroonian food) The interesting thing is that given she rarely has time (between being the eldest in the house after her mother, studying and working at their farm) she expands the business through networking. Other people sell for her or accept to have her product on their posts. She already has a friend that will sell her pastries and another four places where she could leave a bucket of eggs, including Reach Out’s office! But the most amazing thing, Reach Out still has not given her any money. We just took time to talk with her about business and she mobilized funds from many distant relatives to start everything going (she raised 30$). We like what we are seeing and this week she is going to receive her first grant, as she will benefit a lot from it, has a clear plan and a good product. Girls like Rebeca make our job very easy, a few words of encouragement are transformed into solid business in a matter of weeks.

Thank you for making it possible for Rebeca and for so many more like her, we hope you understand that your support has made you a part of so many lives.

P.D: This project was chosen inside Globalgiving as example of Substainable Development Goal #5, Gender Equality so if you want to explain to someone what fighting for Gender Equality is about, just talk about this project! https://www.globalgiving.org/sdg/gender-equality/

P.D2: Meet with us on facebook: www.facebook.com/reachoutcameroon

Dear benefactors, thank you for your kindness one more time.

This is the end of rainy season and some businesses are in a halt and waiting for everything to dry and get busy again. Others like Gillian, who is quickly becoming the star of the program, are booming. Sshe is still doing credit and has added an informal petrol business, she has long past more than 5 times the capital that we (you) gave her, in less than one year. All of it alone, no boyfriend or husband is supporting her. She has no need for it, in fact, she has more income that most males in Tole by now.

But not everyone is Gillian and sometimes our stories are more about second chances or small baby steps that eventually lead somewhere. Nikes received only 30 dollars last time, she was not performing and we thought, being a young and good looking girl, that she was not really engaged on the business as it is often the case in Tole. We discovered later on that it was related to a gender based violence case and, given that the chief of Tole made an unexpected donation to the program, agreed on to give her another small chance. She put together the capital she had left and the money we gave her and went to Douala, the economic capital, where she decided to take advantage and not pity of the permanent rain, she bought as many plastic shoes as she could and tried to sell them in Tole, when “the market was not moving” moved out to Mile16 with her sister, and she sold all of them. She has enough money now to go back to school and she will register this Monday, we cannot support this report with the documentation because she is registering this Monday, but we will upload the picture of her paid school fees when we have it.

More about baby steps, Thelma, the small daughter of one of our beneficiaries who was born deaf and did not know sign language, has been in Buea School for the Deaf for one year and during this time was able to teach her own mother basic sign language, you can see in this video how they communicate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGZTLA_qoMI&feature=youtu.be

The mother has improved on her business, Stephanie is a trader of bananas that buys from local farmers and sells to bigger traders, that will gather from many small women and ripe them and sell them in Douala. Given how limited the efforts of Cameroonian Government are towards disability rights, Buea School for the Deaf has to remain a private institution, and School Fees are very high for Stephanie to cope with. We are fundraising again for her this year. https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/send-thelma-to-deaf-school/ 

We rely on your support to keep changing lives, realistically but optimistically, and we wish you could come with us to Tole and feel the gratitude that is filling its streets, it’s not rare these days that someone offer us a small snack as we are doing our follow-up rounds, people who have not benefitted anything out of the project but know that we (you, the girls and Reach Out) are in the right path. I hope their approval guarantee you that we are doing the best we can with your hard earned money.

Thank you again

P.D: You can know more about Reach Out's projects on facebook: www.facebook.com/reachoutcameroon