Focus on alleviating living standards on rural women in Buea in the South West province of Cameroon: Solidarity for humanity

The rural women in Buea like their counterparts from other rural areas finally wrote down their problems in the face of women’s emancipation and globalisation. Their problems, to name just a few range from lack of capital, lack of social amenities, lack of water, electricity, health poor education, communication, infrastructure, just subsistence farming and marginalisation due to tradition and culture. Thus, they started that combining efforts to support themselves and their communities.

The idea of combining efforts or working in solidarity amongst one another was stated by the co-ordinator which led to the creation of a unit called Rural Training in O.I.C. ( a vocational training school in Buea). With abut 7 willing participants, they came up with the idea of creating the NGO called Rural Women Development Council (RWDC).

The most important point at the initial stage focused on the training of head women who will go back and start sensitising other women in the villages on socio-agricultural ventures so that they can be able to improve on the living standards by becoming members.

The council was founded in 1993 and was the very first NGO to ever see the light of day in the South West Province of Cameroon. It’s Headquarter is in Buea Sub-Division and it has 25 member groups with a population of about 500 members.

Having identified themselves under one umbrella as RWDC members with an Executive organ and a General Assembly meeting once monthly, their idea is to raise the standards of living through solidarity and this was to be tackled practically as follows:

From the above ways therefore, standards of living can be rasied through commitments and total support for one another so that the objectives are obtained.

Despite all efforts at their disposal put in place, there are still many shortcomings in the field that handicap the total success in their objectives. The problems therefore are:

However, despite all the difficulties, there are enormous successes that have gone a long way to improve on the rural women such as:

The co-ordinator is appealing on other NGOs in Cameroon to join FOCAOB and CNOP-CAM so that they can be able to realise their common problems through in different localities.

There is also the risk that foreign NGO continue this kind of contacts all over the world in order that rural population can develop.

Comments

To conclude, there is a general awareness on the needs of the rural women in Buea and the hope is that there should be continuous education and support so that rural development is reached in Buea as well as all over the world.

Notes

This fils was written during the World Peasant Meeting from 6th-11th May in Cameroon

Legitimate governance
Re-founding the living together and the State
To build Peace and Security
Promoting the Territories and Development

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