AMEH MAURICE NGWA

Human  Rights is one of the most effective means of combating many profound human developmental challenges and because of its multiplier effects is often seen as the world’s best investment that can make the world a better place. An educated child is not only better equipped to handle her /his own life challenges but is more capable to support his or her family and community in responding to several challenges. It is important to give hope to the hopeless. That’s why we focus on the rights of the marginalised{domestic workers}and also on the needy and vulnerable individuals and communities.

One of the reasons we set-up UNIMAC, is to advocate for rights of domestic workers and also provide quality education to “out of school” children from disadvantaged rural backgrounds and transition them to regular schools thereafter. Our experience during the past years shows that our girls are not only completing their studies at the primary level but are going on to continue their studies in the secondary and vocational schools. The children are demonstrating learning levels comparable to (if not better than) those enrolled at formal schools. Training, counselling and assisting some of the children affected by the crises in the NW and SW regions of Cameroon and other vulnerable children in our country will give them hope for a better future. Some of those we assisted were never dreaming of getting any form of formal training.

However, more than the breadth of the initiative, what brings satisfaction is the depth that has been introduced in the endeavour by bringing in new academic initiatives, engaging with the local communities and an increased focus on quality and also respect of the rights of domestic workers in Cameroon. Most of our members have been immensely valuable in building an integrated education eco-system reaching rural communities, reinforcing our efforts, and also enhancing the quality of the intervention. Our teachers,legal minds and trainers are at the frontline of our education,councilling,sensitisation of the population. They have shown tremendous zeal and enthusiasm both in transforming their own lives, as well as the lives of the assisted children we work with.

Our story is not complete without making a mention of our supportive donors (individuals, foundation). It is true we have been relying only on a few local donors with small donations and sacrifices made by some of our members, we do appreciate their support. Their faith and confidence in UNIMAC has enabled our journey so far. As we progress one of our aims is focus in enabling and empowering communities through children education,advocating for human rights of the marginalised group{domestic workers} and training of adults. However, even as we scaled-up, we are conscious that there are still a very large number of “out of school” and “irregular to school” children，under aged children working as domestic workers  in Cameroon.

Based on the deliberations during workshops and beyond, UNIMAC, while continuing to focus on its core model, is evaluating a number of initiatives that leverage a “system thinking” approach to sustainably scale our impact. Management during the year helps to facilitate a workshop to reflect on the changing environment and rethinking of our strategies. We hope to enhance our cooperation with other NGOs and international organizations that can assist us in training our personnel, give us material and financial support.

This is also a year we embarked upon strengthening our educational development system and internal processes, using technology, in order to be more effective and efficient in our delivery. This multi-year initiative will help serve us well in meeting our objectives and continue to provide timely information to manage our progress.

Our initiative has experienced a small shift towards distance education of pupils and digitization of some of our activities. I am providing a brief update in this regard as well. Our first priority was to ensure success in our projects no matter the limited scale and means. Next, we continued to engage with our members to raise awareness of the presences of so many domestic violence, needy children, families and communities through research in identified and selected areas.

UNIMAC trained a number Domestic workers and adults this year on small income generating activities like soap making, beads and handmade embroidery producing hand bags, necklace, slippers, table cloths, pillow cases etc. UNIMAC assisted some community schools by donating some didactic materials, donation of textbooks and exercise books and other didactic materials to some needy children, supporting and payment of fees for some drop-out children in two primary schools in the course of the 2022/2023 academic year after their back to school preparation. etc While hoping that we have assistance from other organizations e are correctly identifying needy children in the Akono Sub division in the centre region and some clusters in Mezam division of the north-west region that harbors a lot of displaced and needy children. With these words, I am happy to share with you the statistics of our activity during the first six months of 2023