Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

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.

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