Women & Girls Empowerment Assistant

Why it is important

In rural Cameroon,an average school going girl skips school for 50 days in a year due to the lack of sanitary napkins to use during her monthly period. Working women as well are absent from work during this period for a simple reason. This cause girls to lack behind in academic performance and also negatively affects their self-esteem. Taboos and myths associated with the subject prevents women from being educated about menstrual hygiene and the options available to them. Work,school hours, wages and career are lost. Not just a loss to women and school girls but a big loss to entire communities.

The project

In order to help solve the problem, we created initiatives like KujaPads Initiative and one million pads for progress through which we have collected more than 30000 pads and donated to more that 5000 girls in ten schools and 40 rural teachers in the North West Region of Cameroon, while at the same time deciphering myths and taboos through menstrual hygiene outreach programs in schools and communities

Now we need sustainability, reason we are starting a pilot project in the months ahead, where rural women will be trained to make low-cost pads. This start-up will make pads affordable and accessible to poor school girls and will create job opportunities to rural women.

Your role as a volunteer

The role, responsibility and task of the volunteer will be to promote of reproductive health and menstrual hygiene management to rural women and girls to make informed decisions.

Volunteers working on the women Empowerment program in rural areas in Cameroon have a chance of training the women and girls a host of things. This meant to help women and young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds in both urban and rural setup make informed lifelong decisions concerning their menstrual and reproductive lives.Volunteers working on this program enjoy a rewarding experience since they share one of the issues that's close to the women and girls. Working with smaller groups of trainers who are in charge of dozens of other members on this and many other issues that affect women in their day to day lives.

• We work in schools, orphanages, refugee camps, and in rural and urban slums
  
• Promote health and hygiene
  
• Educate locals and communities on the essential habits to be healthy
  
• Encourage girls to continue their education
  

Develop awareness about these serious issues through engaging tools such as cultural events showing documentary films, games for hygiene, and drama. This will adjust the behavior and understanding of children since they will be able to spread the message in turn. They also teach them about life skills, forms of women Empowerment.Volunteers will work with us in the industry ( either in the production or packaging unit).

The location

Our office and industry in located at a very beautiful part of the North West region called Up Station Bamenda, which is surrounded by trees, great neighbors and great weather conditions. Volunteers will live with us at home and work in the industry which is just a five minutes walk away from home

Who we are looking for:

They will be working with other volunteers .From the beginning of my organization, I made sure to build a family oriented team where we care for each other as family. So our team is warm, welcoming and very friendly.

I will expect our volunteers to be a Multitasker with a ability to adapt according to challenging environment with minimal resources available. His/her need to be a go-getter and self-starter and ability to initiate tasks on own. He or she would be working with our team in implementation of the project. 

Volunteer will in turn learn a lot while working with us as they will also participate in many things in the organization, where they can act a primary resource for the organization giving advice, ideas and ways of implementing them, and can learn all the functions and processes involved in running of an organization effectively first hand.

Volunteers are not expected to bring any special equipment to us but should bring self care items like sweaters and repellents to guide against mosquitoes. They should also ask their primary care doctors to prescribe malaria preventive medication to be taken two weeks before travel.

On weekends the volunteers have a host of activities to choose from, be it a game drive for safari to any game park, water sports in the Cameroon coastline, music concert in the capital or having a homestay visit from our lovely team and volunteers on the ground.

Volunteers will have time to socialize and interact with community persons. They will visit important touristic sites, spend time relaxing in cabarets, should the need arise. They volunteers will visit historical Museums of Fon's palaces in the region.

 On week ends especially Saturdays they will go for sports, swimming, riding horses on hills with the Nomadic Fulani race. They are several swimming pools around the city and lakes that the volunteers will visit. On sundays they volunteer will have the opportunity if Christians to go to fellowship on with other worshipers and can create friends with the brethren.

 The volunteers can take week end travels to other regions of the country to visit and experience city and country life, while also experiencing the beautiful country side and touristic displays. The culture is good and people are very welcoming. Project communities are so very close into the heart of the community and there are so many artifacts that the volunteers can join the community persons to work on. There are very renowned kingdoms with many artifacts that the volunteers will be able to see and to meet with traditional rulers in these palaces. 

Volunteers will experience buying from the market and having to bargain prices for their needs. The pleasure in the volunteering activity is worth the engagement given the context and people they will encounter in the field and in their day to day life