WEICAM

The Women Empowerment Institute of Cameroon is a non-profit organization based in Kumbo in the North West
Region of Cameroon. Its principal goal is to promote human rights and democracy, empower women to become
leaders and engage in poverty reduction activities at the grassroots level. This organization has, since its foundation
in 2006, undertaken bold steps to challenge some of the thinking in a basically rural environment that holds that
women are second class citizens. Its founder, Geraldine Chin, recently enlightened L'Effort Camerounais about some
of her association's activities: Excerpts:

Why did you create this organization?
During the 2005/2006 Academic Year, I was fortunate to be selected by the United States Embassy in Cameroon
for the Hubert Humphrey Award, being the lone beneficiary from Cameroon that year, to study at the Washington
College of Law at the American University in Washington DC. The Hubert Humphrey Fellowship award is an award
to mid-career professionals who have demonstrated leadership qualities in both their personal and professional lives
in their communities who are placed in a university for a year of academic and professional enhancement in the
United States. After obtaining a Master's Degree in International Legal Studies, I came back home and decided to
put my expertise at the service of my people, particularly at the grassroots level. I realized that to achieve my
program goals, I needed an association that would engage in fighting poverty, promoting human rights and
democracy, especially with regards to the empowerment of women. Not finding any organization that met those
needs, I decided to create one, and that is how the Kumbo Women Empowerment Institute came to see the light of
day.

What exactly does the empowerment of women entail?
Empowering women is actually promoting women's rights, but more especially getting women involved in the
process of becoming aware of their rights, empowering them to claim these rights and getting them involved in
poverty alleviation programs. So empowerment, the way we pursue it in the organization, follows a right-based
approach to seeking justice. I cannot say that we are already delivering services as such, but we have it in the
program. But we are empowering women by getting them involved in claiming their rights, knowing those rights and
actively getting engaged in activities that do fight poverty.

What are some of the rights women are deprived of in a rural environment like Kumbo, where you are
based?
By the rights of women, we mean overturning those abuses and violations perpetrated on women that deprive them
from enjoying their God-given dignity as human beings. These abuses have their roots in cultural practices, a
discriminative law or mind-frame. For example, practices as domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, sexual
exploitation, which are quite widespread, but rarely heard of or reported, and which women are usually ashamed of
admitting or even talking about. Other examples are forced, early and arranged marriages, inheritance rights by the
woman and girl-child, the rights of widows, who are disinherited once their husbands are no longer around and
discriminations faced by single women.

Women are also victims of economic poverty and since many of them operate mostly in the informal sector, they are
generally ignorant of their rights. For example, which type of taxes they have to pay and how to go about paying
them. In fact, we operate in an environment where most women do not know their rights at all and where culture has
cultivated a mind-frame that makes people consider women as property and second class citizens.

How do men, in general, and even women, consider your struggle to lift rural women out of their present
ignorance?
Empowering women to know and understand their rights in society and to fight abuses of which they are victim is
actually a very delicate issue; particularly in our environment, which is rural and deeply conservative in many ways.
You are not only dealing with men, who find it difficult to accept that women have rights, you are equally dealing
with women themselves, who do not yet know they have rights. So, at times, resistance comes, not so much from
men, but from women themselves. So, our strategy is to educate women to know and understand their rights and
then bring men to appreciate and respect those rights.

We understand your organization has been instrumental in bringing dozens of couples to celebrate their
marriage at the Kumbo Urban Council. What was that all about?
Yes, that programme has been one of our most successful gender equality endeavors. We have been educating
people on the importance of civil marriages. We bring them to understand that if they do not marry civilly, it is
difficult to resolve legal problems that may arise later. Cameroon law only recognizes civil marriage. We conducted a
survey in our locality and discovered that many people still do not understand the importance of civil marriage, and
the consequences of such ignorance are grave.

A couple just religiously or traditionally married is not married according to Cameroon law and hence their children
are considered 'born out of wedlock'. This sounds funny but this is it! These children would find it extremely difficult
to defend themselves before any law court if their uncles dispute ownership over their parents' property. A wife in
such a relationship cannot legally inherit her late husband's property and the laws that bind her during seizure of
property by in-laws are traditional laws and customs. These traditional practices do not, of course, favor her at all.

Equally, Cameroon law has two types of marriages, that is, polygamy and monogamy and each choice has its legal
consequence. Hence WEICAM, in a bid to promote responsible parenthood, women's inheritance rights and lessen
widowhood problems, decided to launch a campaign on the importance of civil marriage involving an educational
process that culminated in the signing of the legal document by interested couples.
We succeeded to educate many couples and 44 of them opted to marry in July 2008; 40 others came up in
September, and more are on the way. This was in Kumbo alone. We are now at work in Oku and later Mbiame and
Jakiri. The Ndu Rural Council has invited us as well. Our major problem now is funding. It is not easy even to move
from place to place educating our people.

Speaking about funding, how do you manage to fund your projects?
Funding is one of those very difficult aspects in running an organization. It is utterly difficult for young organizations
to get the trust of donors and fulfil their requirements. At the same time a young organization seems to be the
neediest with all the teething problems it faces. In WEICAM, we rely so much on local contribution and we equally
engage in local fund raising and solicit contributions from founders.

We are still building our donor data base and trust, but we are grateful to the US Embassy which has sponsored some
of our projects. Donations have also come from friends who are interested in the work we do, from volunteers out of
the country who have contributed a lot financially and to WEICAM's organizational development. I am a proud
winner of two awards that have helped WEICAM so much during these past years. I was one of four Hubert
Humphrey Impact Award winners in 2007 and winner of the prestigious Peter Cicchino Award for Outstanding
Public Interest Advocacy from Washington College of Law in April 2008.

We understand your organization also trains women in some modern agricultural techniques. Can you
throw more light in this area?
Yes, you know that we operate in a region that practices mostly agriculture. Women form about 80 percent of the
subsistence farmers and supply crops in urban cities of Cameroon and out of the country. So we must build on our
strengths if we want to effectively engage in the fight against poverty. We educate farmers on modern farming
techniques, the making and use of organic manure and introduce improved species of seeds to farmers. In 2007, we
demonstrated to over 3000 farmers how to produce an improved species of Irish potatoes found in IRAD Bambili.
We equally supplied them the improved species and demonstrated how they can multiply their own seeds.

The current program we have at hand is the introduction of a crop that can serve as a cash crop for our woman and
the youth in general. These crops are wheat, vine, mushroom and apple. Research and studies show that these crops
do well in this region, so WEICAM is waiting for any donor to support us master the growing of these crops in
commercial quantities and then search for a market for them. You know that coffee is our lone cash crop, its market
has flopped and it is usually considered a male cash crop. So this time, we want something for our youths and
women, which can help them to fight unemployment and poverty. If this project sees the light of day, then we intend
to accompany it with recycling and compost manure making- so that all the refuse in our municipalities is not
dumped into the streams as is the case now, but transformed into cheaper and healthy farm input. This can create a
lot of jobs for our young people and keep our environment clean.

Many organizations, like yours, are here today and gone tomorrow. What are you doing to ensure that
yours survives?
That is true. An organization's sustainability depends on many factors. We are presently building the capacity of the
organization, engaging only in realistic and feasible projects and relying not only on foreign donations, but local
contribution as well. We present our report of activities and plans to our partners, particularly our donors and
benefactors. Many people at the grassroots do appreciate our work; hence they can support when called upon to do
so.

As we reach out to the community, we are creating networks and partnering with other local and outside
organizations that carry out similar activities. We believe we cannot survive alone. Partnership is the way to go. We
have created our website www.wei-cameroon.org , where we sell our activities to the general public. Each summer
we have applications from international volunteers who want to contribute to the work we are involved in. Once we
are known internationally and build partnerships, then sustainability is guaranteed.

Locally, we work with women cooperatives and over 200 women groups and 64 of them have affiliated with
WEICAM in Bui and Donga Mantung Divisions. We work with human rights groups nationwide and we are in the
process of being registered as a Civil Society Organization. Internationally, we are partner with Nascent Solutions to
help better implement our projects. WEICAM has a multifaceted way of gaining grounds and penetrating
communities locally and internationally.