UPDATE - OCT 2005

BACKGROUND
STRATEGIC HUMANITARIAN SERVICES, abbreviated SHUMAS, started as an informal initiative in 1993 (groups of individuals) helping to educate some deprived and disadvantaged children pushed to premature adulthood. Gradually in 1995, when many people of all walks of life became involved, a constituent Assembly was constituted and a committee was charged to draft a constitution and bye laws which were debated upon and adopted by the General Assembly later that year.
By June 1996 the documents were forwarded to the Cameroon Government for legalization and authorization in conformity with law \No 90/53 of 19/12/90 - regulating the law of Association. In April 1997, per Authorization No 1082/E.29/1111/Vol. 7/APPB, SHUMAS was registered as a charitable non-governmental organization (NGO)

OBJECTIVES
* Empower rural farming groups with more focus on rural women groups through training and support/reinforcement of income generating activities including post harvest technology etc.
* Create access to credit for rural women.
* Train and support the most deprived and disadvantaged of Cameroon society such as orphans, children of handicapped parents, handicapped people through our scholarship programme, sponsorship and resettlement programmes.
* Promote, train and support local communities to be able to protect and manage their environment in such a way that they don't put too much stress on the environment.

GOALS
* Empower everyone, especially the most marginalised people, economically, culturally, socially and politically so that they should gain equal opportunities and become more and more self-reliant.

METHODS
1. Training and support of farming groups with income generating and empowerment creating activities including post harvest technology.
2. Support and train farming groups to acquire post harvest technology facilities.
3. Train and support womens groups to form credit union cooperatives.
4. Construction of farm to market roads and bridges to enable all produce to be evacuated so as to increase earnings of farmers.
5. Train and support local communities to acquire clean water and manage water resources effectively.
6. Provide scholarship, sponsorship and resettlement schemes to create equal opportunities for deprived and disadvantaged children and physically handicapped people.
7. Train and support local groups to protect and manage the local environment. (Preliminary studies, project design, constitution of project management and monitoring and evaluation.)

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Comprises all registered members and it is the supreme organ for decision making. It is presided over by the chairperson.
ADVISORY COUNCIL: This is the brains trust of the organization. It meets as needs be, but must meet at least once every two months. It is responsible for project design, studies and approval of applications. It is in charge of execution of projects and day to day running of the organization. It is presided over by the General Coordinator.

HEAD OFFICE: SHUMAS's Head Office is located at "S" Bend, Nkwen, Bamenda and it is the main contact of the organization that can take any final decision on behalf of SHUMAS, pending decisions of the Advisory Council MACOM or General Assembly.
It hosts the office of the General Coordinator (Chief Executive Officer) and full time senior staff, Information Officer, Financial Advisor and Coordinator of Social Welfare Programmes, and a secretariat with offices of other permanent staff at the Head Office.

ZONAL OFFICES: There are several zonal offices which act as liaison between the main office and the grassroots. They cannot take any major decision except in consultation with the head office.

RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS
TRAININGS
Although a relatively young organisation, SHUMAS has been able to organize, train, and support more than 600 grass-roots womens groups and 45 womens co-operatives across the country. They are comprised mainly of rural poor women and some semi-uban women. SHUMAS considers training to be a very essential component of its projects and runs training for target groups before giving material support. The main aim of the trainings is to build capacities and raise awareness for sustainability purposes. Areas of training include inte-lia;

· Leadership skills
· Basic record and bookkeeping
· Basic management skills
· Project application draft
· Tree nursery and agro-forestry practices (from nursery to out-planting)
· Integrated and organic farming techniques
· Pest management including natural pesticides
· Health education and sensitization
· Income generating activities
· Adult literacy
· Rural appraisal

EMPOWERING WOMEN AND YOUTHS IN RURAL AREAS
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Rural women in Cameroon, like in most African countries, are responsible for providing food for their families in addition to their heavy domestic duties. Paradoxically, they do not have access to cash crop production and other heavy income generating agricultural activities such as livestock rearing. They rarely own land but are expected to produce enough food for their families. Women have to go far off, trekking to beg for farmland to meet up with their families' nutritional and economic needs. They end up wasting most of the day on the way to the farms, thus output is very little compared to the efforts put in.

The situation in the northern part of Cameroon, a purely Muslim traditional setting, makes matters more difficult. Here women are considered as properties and highly marginalized. They have little or no control over decisions in their homes or affecting even their own bodies. They have to work hard on the farm to provide food for their families and money for their husbands to marry new wives. They are denied basic education and are not to be seen in public. They are forced into marriage at the tender ages of 9-13 years to provide money for their fathers to acquire more cattle.

SHUMAS, conscious of this situation, has carried out a dual programme (agriculture/gender mainstreaming) enabling women to come up with projects which have gone a long way to improve both agricultural strategies and their status in general, notwithstanding their low funds. SHUMAS is, with the help of some Nuns of the Catholic Church.The resourcefulness, hospitality and support of the Bishop of Yagoua Diocese, Mgr Immanuel Bushu, has been very instrumental to our activities.

POST HARVEST TECHNOLOGY/LABOUR SAVING DEVICES AND THE MICROCREDIT SCHEME
In order to improve the situation of rural communities in general and women in particular, SHUMAS has been able to combine post harvesttechnology, labour-saving devices and micro-credit schemes into into projects that tackled the problems faced by rural women and the girls.This is helping to improve the status of women, their children and poor communities.

Though these are single projects, they have had multiple objectives all providing a source of income to the women, providing them with labour saving facilities to reduce their daily burden and improve on their health situation. These projectsalso provide them with means of saving and the provision of loans through a revolving fund that SHUMAS has attached to each project.

Above all, each project has a sound and integrated training component that builds women's capacity to identify more of their problems and devise their own solutions. Activities under this programme include:

PROMOTION AND SUPPORT OF SOME WOMENS FARMING GROUPS WITH LABOUR SAVING DEVICES
Some farm implements such as corn mills, cassava mills, wheelbarrows, handcarts, hoes, cutlasses, etc., have been donated to some womens farming groups. This has gone a long way towards reducing the daily burden of the women. It has equally raised income for individuals and groups in general and improved their access to credit through our Revolving Fund. Credit schemes have been built from money raised through this. Extra time facilitated through the acquisition of labour saving and post harvest facilities, is being used for other income generating activities.

Because of the shift from food processing/conservation by traditional methods to the improved technical methods, they have observed an increase in their earnings through a general increase in production. Crops that used to rot because of harvesting difficulties and hardships are now processed easily thus eliminating waste.

SHUMAS has so far supplied 40 cassava milsl to 40 womens groups, 21 corn mills, 80 push-push truck (hand-carts) and a large quantity of other farm inputs like hoes, cutlasses, wheelbarrows, etc.

Semi-traditional method of grinding corn is time-consuming, a health hazard and results in wastage of corn.

 

FUTURE IN OUR HANDS CAMEROON WOMENS CREDIT UNION CO-OPERATIVE NETWORK
Forty five co-operatives at different stages of development, involving several thousand women, have now been established in various parts of the Cameroon with the help and encouragement of SHUMAS. Further information can be seen on the FIOH Fund web page.

Future in Our Hands Ndu
Co-operative

Future in Our Hands Wum
Co-operative

Future in Our Hands
Taku Co-operative

Future in Our Hands Binka
Co-operative

Future in Our Hands
Ntulutang Co-operative

One of the co-operatives benefitting from the the supply of cassava grating machines

A Catholic priest blessing the equipment provided
for the co-operatives

 

PROMOTION, SUPPORT AND TRAINING IN INTEGRATED ORGANIC FARMING
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Farming is the backbone of Cameroon, with farmers occupying about 80% of the population. 90% of these farmers are just small-scale subsistence farmers. These farmers, in the past, used to practise shifting cultivation. When the land was no longer fertile, they would allow it to fall fallow and after some years they could come back. Unfortunately due to the population pressure, poverty, lack of technical know-how and poor agricultural practices, most farms have already been over worked for many years.
Presently, any possibilities of shifting cultivation have been reduced to almost nothing. As a result of the tremendous increase in population pressure, most houses have been constructed on the farmlands; thus available land for each farmer has been drastically reduced. This situation has forced the majority of farmers to cultivate the same piece of land over and over for more than 30 years. The result is that these farmers put in more resources, but get less output year by year. They work for many hours, sometimes more than ten hours of hard labour under scourging sunshine or rainfall, yet they soon find themselves and their families held down by starvation just a few months after harvest. Formerly they used to have sufficient food all year round and the surplus was being sold which could help them pay school fees for their children, etc. The story now is sadly different.

As of now farmers see the use of chemical fertilisers as the only solution. These chemical fertilisers are not only very harmful to the environment, but very expensive too. Companies monopolise the market and set exorbitant prices that cannot be afforded by the poor farmers. Yet they somehow have to grow food to feed their families.

SHUMAS, as a long-term measure, has embarked on training many of her target groups how to practise organic farming and using an integrated farming approach. This is improving the situation, while easing labour and protecting the environment, but unfortunately the problem is so extensive that an integrated approach is needed. The organic farming approach is the best alternative as farming inputs are locally obtained, and the inputs are affordable by everyone.
SHUMAS has presently obtained land on which she intends to build a proposed training centre (Integrated Organic Farming Centre), so that she can reach many more Cameroonian families. This centre, in addition to targeting the rural masses and farmers in general, is intended to serve many researchers, students, volunteers, etc. around the globe. The project proposal is available and we are looking for funding from project partners to execute the project. Three staff members have been trained in Ari - Japan for the past three years to help the project with support from WCC - Switzerland and PCUSA.

We also received an innovative north south and sub south coaching from the FIOH UK chairman in the area of sustainable development and project management that has proven useful and will also play a major role in the implementation of the project.

SUPPORT AND PROMOTION OF HORTICULTURE AND ETHNOBOTANIC GARDENS IN SCHOOLS
SHUMAS has been working with some schools, particularly those in the rural areas to promote the practice of horticulture and gardening. This is in order to improve upon the environment and beauty too. This will also create a conducive environment for learning and a healthy environment for children. At least ten schools have benefited from this project.

PROMOTION OF AGRO-FORESTRY
SHUMAS has provided training and nursed hundreds of thousands of Agro-forestry tree species like the acacia, calliandra, tefrosia, etc. and have provided more than 200,000 seedlings free of charge to many families and groups in the northwest province of Cameroon.

CONSTRUCTION OF VILLAGE SCHOOLS AND SUPPLY OF EQUIPMENT
SHUMAS, in collaboration with AidCamps international, a British charity, has been able to construct and equip some village primary schools. We are presently constructing and equipping the Mbonhkui village Primary School in Bui division, northwest province, Cameroon.

Last year, the Bangui village Primary School in Menchum division was equally constructed and equipped. A list of pre-planning is already on the way for the construction and equiping of another village school in Makika in the west province of Cameroon. Hopefully the construction will begin in the next six months.

A typical village school

The Bangui primary school built with the support of AidCamps in 2003 with the volunteers helping with the final stages of construction.

AidCamps International have organised workcamps in several countries to help poor communities.

Why not visit the web site and find out more:

AIDCAMPS INTERNATIONAL

AidCamps volunteers from several countries outside the SHUMAS office in Bamenda - 2003

After completing the school at Makika, AidCamps organised another project to build a school at the village of Mbokui where previously there had been no school at all.

Visit the AidCamps web site to read an interesting account of one of the volunteers on the PROJECT
"Every single village member was singing and dancing, I must have shook over 200 hands and had more hugs than you can imagine. What had we done to deserve a welcome like this?
It wasn't until that very moment that it hit me, just how life changing our small financial sacrifice was to the villagers of Mbokui."

AidCamps is to organise yet another school PROJECT in the Northwest Province at the village of Mogni starting in November 2005.

The village school at Makika which was replaced with the help of AidCamps and volunteers working with the local community.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Perhaps to better understand the raison d'etre of this project, it might be helpful to have some background information of this area.The northern part of Cameroon has a Sahelian climate, which is complicated with the fast approaching Sahara desert. The climate is characterised by low precipitation, usually below 900mm per year.

There are two seasons, the dry and the rainy seasons, but unlike the middle belt of the country, the dry season goes on for more than nine months (November to July) and about three months of the rainy season (July to October). With just three months of rainy season, the atmospheric humidity increases the average annual temperature to about 35 Degrees C, usually very dry. There are serious water shortages, usually causing many water borne diseases. Heavy floods from Lake Chad and the River Lagone characterise the short rainy season. These rains are significant, rendering roads impassable, isolating villages and causing serious land and soil erosion.

There are many air-borne diseases, like meningitis, that areeasily spread with the help of the hammatan wind, especially as the land is flat and open. These epidemics cause many child deaths. The physical environment is highly threatened by natural and human influence, thus causing many ecological imbalances. Very few trees are found as just about two tree species can survive the long dry season. Because of the bareness of the soil with no trees, and sparse shrubs, there is excessive evaporation rendering water tables very low. This makes life extremely difficult, both for the human beings and cattle, the mainstay of the area. People and cattle die in large numbers during the dry season.

SHUMAS, in collaboration with the Diocese of Yagoua, has been able to initiate a pilot scheme in six villages in the extreme Northern Province of Cameroon. This consisted principally of tree planting exercises, but also led to the training of deprived young girls who never been able to attend school due to gender issues, etc.