Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

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