Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

Dear donors of the KGA project,

A lot has been happening since our last report.

We provided small grants to the latest small group of girls based in Tole. Claudine could get a very nice hair dryer and her hair-dressing saloon is improving every day, Comfort is having both a palm wine bar and a table shop business that she manages at the same time and we also gave a second chance to Glory, because she just gave birth to twins when she started in the program and could not cope with that(and the costs involved) and starting a new business. She is now selling Gateau, a kind of sweet bread typical of Cameroon, and we check up on her regularly.

We have been following up with them and also other, interviewing and assisting young women in Bakwery town, Bumaka and of course Tole.

Just checking on their bookkeeping and listening to their business ideas have made some of them progress a lot, and we keep learning from them. It is exciting to see how they sustain their families and dream of bigger enterprises. This kind of practice helps open them up and help us get a better picture of their situation. Also sometimes they bring new problems to us.

This is how we got to know about Thelma case, the deaf daughter of one of our beneficiaries, who was not learning sign language nor going to any kind of school. We could address this problem before she is too old; she finally started receiving an education in an adequate school. We made a small micro project about it in globalgiving (http://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/send-thelma-to-school/), because Thelma is at school for a period of grace conceded to us by Buea School of the Deaf, but we still have to find sponsors for her. Anyway you can say that it is thanks to all of you that that girl has discovered and given an opportunity to grow, so be proud.

Last 15^th of July Bonus Day was a success thanks to our donors and we received 2990$. Adding to that a fundraising campaign took place during the month of August that reported additional 1378$. That was thanks to Melanie Harbinson, former volunteer of Reach Out. None of this money is yet in Reach Out office, and we are still planning on how we will spend it, but we will do it slowly since we can’t count on such two extraordinary events to keep happening so often.

Next steps include slowly and carefully augmenting the number of girls reached out by the program, and small trainings on income generating activities, according to the needs of both old and new beneficiaries.

Thank you for all that you have done for them.