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| Christelle Bay Chongwain, Executive Director of HOFNA |
The Committee on
Non-Governmental Organizations at its 2018 Regular Session, held from January
29 to February 7, 2018 made the recommendation which was endorsed at ECOSOC’s
Coordination and Management Meeting held on April 16-18, 2018.
According to Christelle
Bay Chongwain, Executive Director of HOFNA, the status that has been granted
the organisation four years after they applied is a milestone in the journey of
the nonprofit organization that is dedicated to helping the most
underprivileged and marginalized youth in Cameroon achieve lasting positive
changes in their lives.
“This status is like a
voice calling on us to do more; to empower more women and girls in the
communities that we serve,” Christelle Bay told NewsWatch.
After taking part in the
post 2015 development agenda, mobilising women and youth groups in the
communities, getting their assessment of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) and their priorities for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), HOFNA
had hoped to the UN General Assembly of that year but the dream was quashed for
lack of accreditation.
Christelle Bay explained
that attending the United Nations general Assembly at that time would have
offered them an opportunity to join their voices on a global platform to
present that which women in the rural communities wanted and not to have
attended the GA motivated HOFNA to continue pushing for the status which was
granted last month.
With the status granted,
HOFNA can now communicate directly with the NGO branch of the United Nations
and host side events during UN General Assemblies. The organisation has to also
designate its representatives to UN Headquarters in New York as well as to the
duty stations in Geneva and Vienna.
“Anything that concerns
the UN we have a special place to present our views. This is actually an
opportunity for us to represent the voices of the women and girls in those
rural communities at the UN platform and also an opportunity to get more people
engaged in the work HOFNA is doing in Cameroon. It entails a lot and I think
that it is actually the beginning of bigger work,” Christelle said.
Education for all
HOFNA was created in
2010 and registered in 2012 in the North West region with base in Bamenda. On
creation HOFNA’s primary activities centred around poverty alleviation, access
to education for all, human right’s education, environmental conservation,
sustainable agriculture, youth and women empowerment as well as hygiene and
sanitation.
With a mission of
helping poor and vulnerable people in society to achieve positive and lasting
changes in their lives, HOFNA has over the years succeeded in creating a
positive impact in society, especially in the domain of eradicating
gender-based violence through training, education and sensitization of
stakeholders in the domain.
It is worthy to recall
here that since its creation, HOFNA has succeeded in training over 30
traditional rulers and traditional title holders in Donga Mantung division on
responding to and preventing gender-based violence. During the training emphasis was placed on
the prevention child trafficking and its attendant ills.
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| HOFNA saying No to child, early and forced marriages |
In the same vein, over
100 taxi drivers, bike riders, barbers and hair dressers were drilled on how to
respond and prevent child trafficking and gender-based violence in their
various communities in the North West region.
In order to drive home
their message of fighting gender-based violence, HOFNA used theatre and debates
to reach out to over 6000 students, parents and teachers. The participants were
sensitized on child trafficking, the ills of early and forced marriages and
other forms of school-related gender-based violence.
HOFNA has been able to
curb teenage pregnancies and school dropouts by encouraging over 200 girls to
stay in school over the past 6 years through leadership development programs
and scholarship awards. Equally the NGO has over the years donated benches,
textbooks, pens, drinking pales, charts, didactic materials and materials for
extracurricular activities that are benefitting over 500 children in 5 schools
in rural communities in the North West Region.
Preaching tolerance through poetry
In an era of religious
extremism, HOFNA has been able to level the ground by engaging over 3000 young
people to use poetry, oral literature and the unifying power of music to
promote religious tolerance in Cameroon.
HOFNA in a bid to
alleviate poverty has equally engaged over 200 youth and women in agriculture
as a business. They have been trained on sustainable agriculture best practices
for income generation through their Certified Coffee Nursery Initiative and the
HOFNA Farm that has been established.
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| Girls take part in a HOFNA organised boot camp |
HOFNA’s activities in
diverse domains have impacted positively on the society. This has been so
because HOFNA has help vulnerable people acquire self-reliance development
through the participatory approach. This
has been possible due to the fact that HOFNA implements its activities using
the sustainable community-based approach.
This approach which uses low technology is sustainable and motivates communities
at the grassroots level to be propellers of their own socio-economic
development. The overall impact is that the populations have a say in the
policies that govern them and their families. In this wise their socio-economic
development is community-driven and achieves the greatest good for the greatest
majority.
It is worthy to note that along the years
HOFNA has worked with UNDP, Albany Associates and over 15 Civil Society
Organizations, CSOs, from Sub-Saharan Africa to develop an application that
guides CSOs and individuals plan and run effective campaigns to prevent/counter
violent extremism.
With all these palpable
benchmarks, it is therefore not surprising that HOFNA that plans to run a
girls’ empowerment centre in the North West region gained Special Consultative
Status to the United Nations ECOSOC.
By Ndi Eugene Ndi (First
published in NewsWatch N° 022 of Wednesday May 16, 2018)
