When we teach our girls, women, and widows skills, we dare to create a society with less dependency.
Since the start of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, the number of vulnerable women increases daily, creating a need for a mechanism to be put in place to ensure that these persons do not stay on the streets begging or involving themselves in inhuman activities.
With this, The Mentors Foundation led by Paul Agbor has been active in the field to see that these people are not just assisted with food and shelter, but trained on skills that they can use wherever they may find themselves in the future.
The Mentor foundation created in 2007 is aimed at curbing poverty through empowerment programs.
Since the start of the crisis, the foundation can boast of impacting the lives of about a thousand people in 15 different communities. Recent of their work is the program where about 60 women/girls were trained on how to grow and market vegetables and other farm produce.
Paul thinks this will not just ensure that the women can fend for themselves and family, but will also keep them off the streets.
Besides training on crop production, the foundation also trains vulnerable people how to produce soap, and entrepreneurship programs to name a few.
Meanwhile, as far as formal education is concerned, Paul thinks many vulnerable children do not have access to quality education but there is little or no mechanism to see that these children have access to their rights.
In a bid to solve this problem, the mentors’ foundation does facts finding and documentation of these people, disseminates information to concerned state institutions and other relevant agencies at national and international levels, and follows up with beneficiaries to name a few.
Added to these, the mentors’ foundation runs a saloon in Summerset Bilingual College, Buea. This saloon serves as a low-cost center where students do their hair at lower prices.
In years to come, Paul intends to create training centers for women/girls in different communities in Cameroon, and probably with assistance, this dream can be realized sooner than later.