HOFNA Cameroon Arms IDPs With Income Generating Skills To Combat GBV.

By Raymond Dingana

Hope For The Needy Association-HOFNA Cameroon has trained over one hundred disadvantaged Internally Displaced Women, Girls and Teenage Mothers in income generating activities and ways to combat Gender Based Violence. Thanks to five trainings and workshops organized in five Regions of the country as part of their National Initiative to End Violence Against Women and Girls (NITE-VAWG), sponsored by the German Mission to Cameroon, they can now produce soap for themselves which are expected to support them in curbing the spread of COVID-19 as well improving on their income generation, while the sanitary pads and beaded sandals will improve on their income generating capacities and livelihoods. HOFNA also supported them with Start Up Material.

IDPs Attending Training/Workshop.

From HOFNA To The Trainees To Start Up Income Generating Activities.

The exercise that took place between May 25 to June 20th in Nkambe NWR, Bafoussam, West Region), Buea SWR, Mbombo in the Littoral, and Makenene in the Center also have as agenda , to engage communities respond to and prevention of Gender Based Violence. This is through Know Your Rights Campaigns with  community leaders and most especially set the pace to work with these grassroots communities to develop a local approach to implement the #UNSCR1325 in Cameroon.

HOFNA's Executive Director Christelle Bay Nfor, now adds some flesh to the purpose of the project “The purpose of the project is also to raise awareness on gender based violence and engage communities to respond to and prevent it while establishing a community response system in the form of Gender violence Survivors Support Networks that can facilitate this reporting in different communities, in partnership with HOFNA. Another very vital aspect of the project is bringing together grassroots Women-led organizations from all 10 regions to work together to develop Local Action Plans to speed up the implementation of the UNSC Resolution 1325 in Cameroon”. She said.

IDPs Taking Lessons on GBV And Income Generation

Start Up Support To Trainees.

She also threw more light as to the choice of participants“For the IDPs, we got young women and teenage mothers struggling their way through COVID-19 and the violent Conflict and truly in need of a program like ours to give them a whole new perspective or hope. We did need analysis and identified how our programs would improve on their quality of life. For the community leaders we have engaged in each of the 5 regions, focus was on identifying women and men who have remain influential or active in their communities, who head other CBOs. This was to ensure that knowledge and skills acquired will be shared with other members of the CBOs to maximize outreach”.

More Items Produced By Trainees.

Evaluating the project HOFNA CAMEROON Programs Manager, Munteh Florence says GBV is still a reality in all communities,  under reporting of rape cases and others is still the order of the day, communities still have not known they have the responsibility to hold perpetrators accountable, hence violence continues.

Reacting to the workshops, participants still look for ways to justify or cover acts of violence, because of family ties. There is still a lot of education and sensitization to be done if the silence around GBV must be reduce it in all its forms. The issue of blame game, blaming a woman for not satisfying the husband hence the reason why the husband rapes his children.

Some community members learnt about forms of GBV for the first time, even forms of violence happening to them. While others are taking information on GBV for granted, other communities have never heard about it all. This limits action and their effective participation in peace building especially at the grassroots.

 

 

 

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