Please delete now if the topic (as stated on the subject line) does not
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Cheers,
--Emilie
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Subject: Information Empowers Women (Part I)

Mbouda, Cameroon-When Fossi Yoni Mireille, 22, dropped out of secondary
school two years ago, her future was bleak. She became pregnant and married
her boyfriend, also a secondary school drop-out. They had no way of earning
an income. Things took a turn for the better, however, when she was
admitted to the Mbouda Women's Promotion Centre, a field unit of the
Ministry of Women's Affairs.
Today, thanks to the education and training in vegetable farming and
poultry techniques she received from the centre, Mireille runs a vegetable
farm on which her small family thrives. "I make almost 130,000 francs
(US$200) a month and my family is totally dependent on it," she says.
Mireille, like many others, has benefited from an Internet service provided
by the Association for the Development of Women and Health (FESADE), a
non-governmental organization (NGO), based in the capital Yaounde. FESADE
is connected to the Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP)
started by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in September
1996. It was not easy to introduce cutting-edge technology in a country
with a mostly rural population and five telephone lines for every 1,000
people.
This is why SDNP?s approach became service oriented, geared to helping
people bridge the gaps in the local infrastructure through networking.
Relying heavily on local resources, Wawa A. Ngenge, the national
coordinator for the programme, managed to stretch the $250,000 in UNDP
project funds two years beyond the planned two-year period. "We achieved
this by relying on the resources of the network of members that we put
together," he says. The network consists of 300 members including
scientists, NGOs, academics and government officials. "These people worked
with us to identify areas of information technology which they could apply
to their daily activities," says Ngenge.

To reach out to poor communities, the programme?s ultimate target group,
many members serve as intermediaries, working with the grassroots
population. Among them are rural NGOs and women's groups. SDNP took off
initially with three computers in Yaounde and later created a website,
which was advertised by its links to other places. Now in its fourth year,
SDNP has more than 100 people with electronic mail boxes spread over five
of Cameroon's 10 provinces. The programme has seven mailing lists with 330
members sharing information on a variety of issues on sustainable development.

It also services more than 10,000 people through its Internet Help Desk.
Networking at the grassroots level Monthe Giselle, Director of the Mbouda
Women?s Promotion Centre, serves as an intermediary between FESADE and her
institution. She travels 300 kilometres regularly to Yaounde for Internet
seminars, training workshops and information exchange. Giselle shares this
information and training with over 36 women's socio-economic and cultural
groups, which are spread over four towns and several villages.
The women?s centre offers training in health and nutrition, dressmaking,
farming and livestock breeding and has trained more than 100 women's
groups, as well as individuals. Unlike the training centre in Mbouda, the
Society for Initiatives in Rural Development and Environmental Protection
(SIRDEP) in the provincial capital of Bamenda, 450 kilometres from Yaounde,
is directly connected to SDNP?s e-mail server. This provides contact with
its partners, and also helps the search for global initiatives to improve
the living standards of rural communities. It is an invaluable tool for
researching issues related to the environment, agriculture and livestock
raising. SIRDEP works with over 40 diverse groups in the province.

Mama Dominica Lacombi, 57, is the leader of a group based in Mankon, a
village near Bamenda, 370 kilometres from Yaounde. She depends on SIRDEP
for information on modern techniques for breeding livestock. She is
illiterate but that has not stopped her from being a successful
entrepreneur. She told CHOICES that her eight-person group borrowed about
$800 from SIRDEP and received training on pig rearing. The group now owns a
pig farm with 60 pigs. "Since we initiated our links with SIRDEP, our
standard of living has improved, as well as our vision for the future,"
says the mother of seven grown children.
"Nobody can underestimate the valuable role of the Internet in our lives
today in Cameroon," says Clara Anyangwe, an agro-economist. Information
downloaded from SDNP has assisted SIRDEP enormously in its training
programme, which includes university graduates. The programme helps them to
find jobs or to create small enterprises. Heifer Project International
(HPI) is a Bamenda-based international NGO concerned with livestock
breeding and development. It depends on the e-mail and Internet services
provided by SDNP, to communicate with its head office in the United States
and project donors in Holland and other parts of the world. More
importantly, the development network helps the organization to feed its
national network of projects. "Seventy percent of our project partners and
beneficiaries in Cameroon are women whose practical needs in livestock
production are addressed by our organization with help from the networking
programme," says D. Henry Njankoi, the deputy director.

Tamfu Hanson Ghandi

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