RELUFA has been working to improve the living conditions of some villages in the Far North Region of Cameroon where food insecurity, hunger, and poverty have been a major concern for decades. Most families in villages in this region can only produce food that can sustain them for about 8 months in a year. During the lean period that generally occurs between June and September, hunger is widespread, and many families find it difficult to even afford one meal per day.
In 2006, together with community members in some of these villages, RELUFA initiated the Community Cereal Bank program to address the recurrent hunger problem. The RELUFA Community Cereal Bank entails an allocation of 60 bags of maize or millet (one bag is approximately 100 Kilograms) to each cereal bank so that members of the community can borrow from the bank during the lean period and reimburse during the harvest period.
Mbozo Kaé village was identified in 2014 for the creation of a community cereal bank and with support from the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) of PCUSA, RELUFA allocated 60 bags of maize to start a cereal bank.
After barely 3 years, the Mbozo Kaé cereal bank had increased their available maize reserves to 75 bags due to transparency and accountability in management with regular reimbursements and payment of an in-kind interest by those who borrow from the cereal bank. In 2017 PHP support enabled RELUFA to build a durable cereal storage facility for Mbozo Kaé Village.
Defying Predictions
In March 2021, RELUFA obtained support from Growing Hope Globally (GHG), Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) and the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) to continue to contribute to finding solutions to reduce hunger and poverty in villages in the Far North Region of Cameroon. Reinforcing community cereal banks and improvement of local agricultural production were identified by RELUFA together with the villages concerned. In recognition of the commitment of community members in Mbozo Kaé village to improve their conditions, RELUFA included them as one of the beneficiary villages among 45 others. Mbozo Kaé village started a community farm where community members could jointly cultivate millet/maize to supplement the stock in their community cereal bank and part of it could be sold to raise funds for other village development initiatives. In 2021, through RELUFA support, Mbozo Kaé obtained funds for renting 0.5 hectares of land for their community farm and for purchase of organic manure for farmland fertilization. As a result of this intervention, 15 bags of millet were harvested during the crop harvest in October 2021 from the community farm.
The community members in Mbozo Kaé jointly mobilize and organize themselves for work in their community farm by, plowing, weeding, putting organic fertilization on the farm, and harvesting the crops. To carry out these different tasks, community members are informed two days in advance so that they could temporarily free themselves from their own personal activities to work on the community farm.
A Happy End
Mbozo Kaé village is making commendable strides in its transformation as a result of RELUFA’s intervention. But despite progress, the village still faces other existential problems. Women and children trek for 3 km to grind the maize or millet which is the main food for the family. The village had no maize/millet grinding machine. An existing option was to grind the maize or millet manually using a stone adapted for this purpose. Upon close observation and trial, this is a tedious and painstaking process to be able to grind the cereals manually into a corn or millet flour to a quantity that can suffice for a meal for the family.
UMVERTEILEN, an organization based in Germany, and John Knox Presbyterian Church in Cleveland USA provided funds to RELUFA to support capacity building, administrative organization of clusters to strengthen them, and also obtain a grinding machine for Mbozo Kaé village. On the 8th of January 2022, the corn/millet grinding machine was officially handed to Mbozo Kaé village.
Positive outcomes are achieved when community members are fully involved and engaged in initiatives undertaken to improve their welfare. Such actions can change lives and that is what support from PHP, PDA, GHG, Umverteilen, and John Knox Presbyterian Church Cleveland has done in Mboz Kaé.
