NEWSLETTERCameroon |
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Chicago JH third travel team returns by Michael Winters, Chicago JH Teamleader During their two week visit to Cameroon, our team members, Delmar Meester from First Presbyterian Church in Chicago Heights, and Deb Rodeghero and R. Michael Winters from Morton Grove Community Church, visited many of the programs supported by members of RELUFA, the Network against Hunger, Poverty and Injustice. |
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In Galgala's granary. From left to right: Moise Gakola, Community Worker Jean Moutsoko, President Grain Bank Management Committee Michael Winters, Chicago JH |
Visiting Granaries in the Extreme North, documenting the state of compensations paid to villages along the jungle road paralleling the Chad/Cameroon Oil Pipeline, witnessing the joyful thanksgiving accompanying the first CAP (RELUFA's micro finance) loans, the emerging theme was capacitating women. |
On this page: * Chicago JH third travel team returns from Cameroon * Call for transparency renders advocates vulnerable * Credit Against Poverty program operational (2MB video clip) More info: On RELUFA's website: Publish What You Pay website: Gobal Witness reports: All the President's Men A time for Transparency |
Magdaline Agbor, of RELUFA Member Organization, Changing Mentalities and Empowering Groups (CHAMEG), in a powerful and inspired moment during RELUFA’s General Assembly pointed out how helping women is the key not only to their children’s and family’s welfare, but to their nation’s welfare. |
Representative of the Buea Self-Help Women's Group (r) with sponsor Meg Agbor of CHAMEG (l) |
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" I danced with the Spirit.. ..the experience has shifted my spiritual landscape " |
Eleazar Fernandez speaks about globalization and the theological realm for solidarity action
RELUFA members and staff with the JH delegations of Chicago and the Twin Cities Area, and the JH Companionship Facilitator in Cameroon after the two-day network meetings of 27-28 January 2007. |
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During that same meeting, Dr. Eleazar Fernandez, a member of Twin Cities Area Joining Hands and Professor of Constructive Theology at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in a thumbnail lecture on globalization emphasized how vastly important it was for the international community to understand the economic, social, political, family, tribal, religious context of the Cameroonian culture.
Michael Winters said after the trip, “I danced with the Spirit,” a reference to the joyous dancing and singing which referenced the CAP loans. He also admitted, “The experience has shifted my spiritual landscape,” a characterization of the power of his experience. “Without a doubt I have to discern again what it means to seek justice and correct oppression". |
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The call for transparency renders advocates vulnerable by Christi Boyd The Cameroonian EITI Chapter In light of Cameroon's adherence to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the government of Cameroon through the Ministry of Economy and Finance released its first EITI report in the last week of 2006. Covering the years 2001-2004, the report accounts for the government's revenues and expenditures associated with national and international operators in the extractive industries sector on Cameroonian territory. While Civil Society is an official interlocutor in the national EITI committee, several of its representatives only learned about the release of the report one hour before the official ceremony for its presentation. |
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RELUFA's national coordinator, Valery Nodem, opens the January '07 workshop on two transparency campaigns the network is involved in. |
After study of the report, the Cameroonian Publish What You Pay (PWYP) coalition drafted a declaration decrying the flaws they noted in the numbers and processes mentioned in the report, and the development of the initiative in Cameroon as a whole. When officials were notified about the intended publication of the declaration, representatives of the coalition members, including RELUFA and a couple of network member organizations, were summoned by the government. With references to last year’s arrest of two Congolese PWYP activists, the representatives were reminded of the sensitivities surrounding this issue, and instructed to modify undesirable statements made in the declaration.It is to be seen if and how the Cameroonian PWYP coalition will hold under this pressure. | |
Solidarity actions successful RELUFA's role in the coalition extends beyond the Cameroonian borders, and our JH partners know these and many other PWYP advocates in person. Anything related to the larger region of Central and West Africa concerns the network. We extend therefore a great thank you to Lionel Derenoncourt, Michael Winters and Ted Lucas for leading the JH community to convey to the Angolan Embassy in the US the concerns raised within the PCUSA about the circumstances of Wykes’ arrest. By joining hands we helped achieve her initial release from prison, and eventually her safe return to Great Britain. The charges against her, however, have not been dropped. |
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Echos from the Pipe |
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Chicago and PTCA delegations sitting down with Ebome fishermen to hear their experiences with the Chad Cameroon Oil and Pipeline Project |
Deb Rodeghero and Del Meester listen to members of a Bakola ("pygmy") family explaining how the pipeline further strained their relationships with Bantu neighbors. |
Eleazar Fernandez shares in a Bakola settlement about the plight of indigenous peoples in the Phillippines and in the US |
Credit Against Poverty operational Saturday, 29 January 2007 marked a milestone for RELUFA. After the approval from the network Board of Directors in 2003, a Task Force had been working to design a microfinance program that responds to the need of seed money for projects by the poor at the grassroots, and is tailored to RELUFA as a network of autonomous groups. In August 2005 the General Assembly of network members accepted the workplan presented by the Task Force, chose the Credit Committee members and baptized the program Credit Against Poverty (CAP). Last year a part-time program coordinator was hired and training sessions organized for network member organizations and CAP's potential beneficiaries. In June 2006 the network submitted its request for registration to the Ministry of Finance, and in line with the juridical framework for micro-finance institutions in Cameroon, the program became operational six months later.` |
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Six of the first CAP beneficiaries and their sponsors. |
A modest fund was available for the first loans, thanks to the shares that participating network member organizations had paid into the program. In January the credit committee screened the twenty-two requests that had been submitted, and eventually retained eleven to receive CAP's first loans. Sponsored by five different member organizations these beneficiaries come from the Far North, the West, South West, Littoral and Center provinces. The supported projects vary from opening up a small restaurant or a tailor workshop, to raising pigs, drying fruits, selling staple grains (millet) or small consumer goods. The other requests will await a second chance when new funds will have come in. In the meantime, the Credit Committee is receiving new loan applications. | |
New food supplies for the lean season |
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Defying speculators on the grain markets, farmers of the 18 communities participating in RELUFA's Food Sovereignty program are in the final stages of reconstituting the stocks in their village grain banks from the produce of their fields. Watch the 2 minute clip below with impressions from the threshing floor of Dimsack. Please, allow a few minutes for the video to start playing by itself.
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Villagers of Galgala share with the Chicago JH delegation about the impact of their grain bank on the well-being of their families.
With members of the women's grain bank of Tchembi. |
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