A certificate-award ceremony, chaired by senior culture officials in Littoral, took place at the Bonendale Chief's Palace last Saturday.

Some 100 children in and around Bonendale, a community on the outskirts of Douala, have been equipped with skills in various areas of art and culture. The training exercise, which began on August 1, 2010, rounded off with certificates handed to participants at Bonendale Chief's Palace on Saturday 28.

The event organised by the Bonendale Art and Culture Association (BAC), whose main objective is to train young people through the promotion of art and culture by making use of traditional and modern tools in its training process. Every year BAC brings together children and adults of between 5 and 18 years with the goal of introducing them to cartooning, music, modern technology, radio journalism, plastic arts, dancing as well as educative dialogues on HIV/AIDS, drug addiction, and environment. The children during their stay were also trained on the Sawa fashion; "Kaba and Sanja".

BAC President, Prince Ndoumbe Emmanuel, disclosed that the idea to create the association resulted from the artistes residing in Bonendale; Mpah Dooh, Goddy Leye, Hon. Pi Dipoko, Henry and Louis Epee, and others in the diaspora like Ewandje epee, Etienne Mbappe, and so on. "We're opportune with such cultural riches to come up with a useful framework and functional initiation of Bonendale children and those elsewhere (France) to transfer knowledge and experience with the help of professional artistes."

Since its creation in 2007, BAC has carried out school holiday programmes such as "Bonendale Information Village", "Bonendale Sweet Holidays" and the latest being "Bonendale Twenty-Ten Cartoon Workshop" which took place from 1-28 August, 2010. This year's focus was to build capacities in traditional and modern music, video-cinema, theatre, plastic arts, local language, internet, multimedia, piano, guitar, and the use of digital apparati. A cartoon film titled "Endale" was produced and pre-selected among 16 films by the Goethe Institute.

The certificate-award ceremony was presided over by the Regional Delegate of Culture for the Littoral.