Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

Dear donors,

After the amazing support of donors like you during December, we are increasing the budget of this program substantially, because of you, 39 girls will be trained and 22 will receive also financial support this March. Thank you for believing on these amazing women and girls, and for trusting us, we won’t let you down. In case you don’t really know what Reach Out Cameroon is about, take a few minutes to stroll through our facebook page! www.facebook.com/reachoutcameroon

This start of the year we wanted to learn more about what worked and what did not for the past years, we reached to more than 50 past beneficiaries, some higlights:

Lorencia started with us in 2014. She was trading vegetables in the market, after going through many different businesses. She struggled a lot to provide for a family with an unsupportive husband, “My husband and I are just managing. Love and poverty don’t go well together. He’s been bringing me down all these years. He would come and beg me for 1000 francs, sometimes he gives back sometimes he does not. So I stopped it. I told him: I don’t have any 1 franc to give you”. Lorencia is also an excellent cook, and quickly she has become our official cook for all events, and is building a carrier as a cook for ocassions. She has now multiplied by 4 the capital received for her trading business, and turned around the husband, who now contributes a small monthly sum to household expenditures.

Marie, a young girl who you might remember from last report, is taking good care of the pigs she received, feeding them with vegetabe waste from the family farm. She is also succesfully trading bananas (her monthly profit is equivalent to the grant we gave her) “I'm really grateful, I feel I don't need more support and now you should help new girls".

Odilia received small but critical support more than two years ago, when she just started her hairdressing saloon. She is now managing a booming saloon with a working capital of 40 times the money received and she is now employing and training other girls.

Success has to be credited mostly to the girls determination and to very critical factors like the family environment, the role of the husband or boyfriend is key. We've seen disruptive partners, but also exemplary ones. Kelvin (see picture under) does not only approve of what her wife Charlotte is doing, he joined efforts with her to build a beauty saloon, where he does the nails. We love to see a man helping his wife shine.

And who is coming next? Girls like Elekta, an HIV positive girl who is taking care of her elderly parents and her son selling meat snacks. Strong, assertive and with a mind for business, we look forward to see what she can do with a bit of help, she is among the 39 selected to undergo training on March. We hope you will join her on this journey.

We also spend time on building our own skills. We trained our staff on beekeeping and mushroom production. Seizing the opportunity provided by two different local organizations, friends and partners of us, the Bonakanda Bova Bee Farmers Group (BOBEEFAG) and the NGO Changing Mentalities and Empowering Groups (CHAMEG). We thank them again. Our staff received amazing and intensive training that we will soon be bringing into the field. The potential for these low-cost, ecological, highly profitable and not so time consuming activities is just too big. We are not in this fight alone and if we want to achieve real change in the fight against poverty we must rely in friends like them.

We want to finish with a statement Lorencia made during our last interview.

“I like that you listen to me, and that you tell me that someone will care about this story, because at times I felt like my life did not matter to anyone, but seeing someone asking me these questions and taking an interest in my life makes me feel like someone cares." She does not know you, and you did not know her, but it was you caring about her that brought her where she is now.

Thank you!

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P.D: Today is Women's Day! Today and during this week, any donation made through globalgiving UK will be matched by 50%! Until funds run out! Donations need to be done through this link: http://www.globalgiving.co.uk/projects/make-an-impact-girls-education-cameroon/

Consider this opportunity to maximize your impact and share the good news among your friends. Thank you for everything you have already done for them.