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Cameroon: Women's Group Declares War Against Girl-Child Exploitation
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The Post (Buea)
7 March 2008
Posted to the web 7 March 2008
Kini Nsom
The Wimbum Women's Development Network in Yaounde known as Bahri-Abee has launched a fight against the exploitation of young girls in Donga Mantung Division, Northwest Province.
This was the main resolution the outfit took during its mini-workshop in Yaounde recently. The Cultural Affairs Officer of the US Embassy in Yaounde, Mrs Gladys Viban who was the main resource person, presented a lecture on " Investing in women and girls"
She harped on women's empowerment and the education of the girl child as a way of ensuring that women take up positions of responsibility in the society. She recommended the mainstreaming of gender into every sphere of national life, noting that it is the only way of getting women out of the doldrums of chauvinism, marginalisation and discrimination. Mrs. Viban regretted the fact that in Cameroon, only few women are Members of Parliament, MPs and mayors.
Speaking at the occasion, Bahri-Abee President and senior journalist, Marie-Louise Ngwa Cheika, regretted the fact that unscrupulous persons are exploiting many girls from the Wimbum land in Donga Mantung Division. She said the young girls, most of whom are primary school dropouts, are recruited and sent to the Centre, Southwest and Littoral Provinces as house-helps, bar girls and even prostitutes.
According to her, the girls who dropped out of school because of poverty make up the bulk of a phenomenon in the coastal areas known as " Bamenda Girls" This means girls that are recruited to works as house helps almost for free. Such girls do not have the opportunity to go to school and because of their poor family background, they look for anything to hang on and so become vulnerable to all sorts of exploitations.
It is in the face of such an agonising plight of the young girls, Ngwa Cheika said, that Bahri-Abee is determined to fight against." We are trying to see how we can raise funds to build a vocational centre for young girls in a Wimbum land who do not have the opportunity to continue their education," the Bahri-Abee boss said.
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She said girls, who would go through the vocational centre, would learn various trades and have skills that would enable them to bargain with anybody who wants to employ them. She disclosed that Bahri-Abee would lay the foundation stone of the vocational centre in Ndu this Year.
In order to realise the project, she said, the outfit would raise funds from members, people of goodwill, national and international donors. Bahri-Abee is a non-governmental and apolitical association made up of women from the Wimbum tribe of the Donga Mantung Division, in the Northwest Province. The name Bahri-Abee, which is from the local language, Limbum, means, " Building together"
The name embodies the vision and mission of the association that was founded in 2006. Bahri-Abee currently has a membership of close to 50 women from three women's associations, namely Mallah Yaounde, Boma Buea and Boma Bamenda. The main goal of the group from 2008 to 2011 is to address the worrying phenomena of prostitution, child labour and other forms of abuse that young girls from Donga Mantung suffer.
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