When using PAYPAL to donate, please send an email to 11 Oaks to let them know your donation is earmarked for “Cameroon.”   Thank you!

It’s time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the coming year. Michigan Decorations is winding down for the year and things are getting wrapped up, but I need your help with the next adventure. I’m calling on you, as my family, friends and business partners, to help me help others.

I have made a commitment to go to Cameroon and help a grassroots organization, The Women’s Circle for Social Action and Aid. I am  leaving Feb. 4 and returning April 28, 2010. I’ll be helping women to start up businesses, assisting in innovative agricultural methods, building solar cookers and solar fruit dryers.

I will be working with Celestine Y., who helps women in six remote villages. She had a dream for her community and found a building that would be her home and community center.

A group of dedicated women organized a non-profit organization and have bought a computer and sewing machine to teach vocational skills, and have purchased benches for women and children to sit on during school classes. It is tremendously committed people like Celestine and her group who are changing Africa. I feel very lucky to be invited to work with them.

I am collaborating with Chris and Sue Skellenger, founders of 11 Oaks here in northern Michigan, who are working to increase the food security of the world’s poorest people using gravity-fed drip irrigation and recycled water.  This system enables people to  grow vegetables when there is no rain.

Please go to 11 Oaks to learn about the great work they’ve already done. It is through ll Oaks that I am requesting any financial assistance you can offer.  There is a simple link for donations on the website.  Contributions are tax deductible under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue code! ID # 20-5939192

To keep in touch with our work in Cameroon visit http://www.michigandecorations.com/blog

1. Teachers and tutors
for orphaned & vulnerable kids
for educating girls and women
who have been excluded from education.

2. Building capacities in leadership and team work
3. Vocational education to increase income for women:
.Teach Sewing, computer courses, hairdressing and esthetical care
4. Teach children in hand work, drawing, animation, etc.

6. Teach women and children English

7. In the future, we will address mental health needs In Cameroon.
Partners in other parts of Cameroon say that patients are shackled in the state hospital.  We acknowledge that it is wise to “nibble at the edges” rather attack frontally. Thus we will need social workers, psychologists and psychiatrics with mental health experience.

What are the needs in the villages?

1. Agricultural
Cameroon is lush, tropical land where food grows without too much coaxing
and tropical fruits fall off the trees into your mouth.

Farmers seek help with soil improvement & composting.

And addressing the worms in the cassava (no worms in their feet)

2. Farmers would like help generating more income.  They do well with a subsistence economy but do not know how to shift into a market economy.
3. Small business owners & entrepreneurs would be treasured to help make small start-up businesses
e.g. they grow lemon grass but need help marketing as lemon grass tea (which helps prevent malaria. Malaria is the only major concern in  working in Cameroon.

4. Marketing & business experts who can help villagers market
their agricultural products to international Fair Trade markets

5. People that are well versed in Fair Trade, farmer’s associations and/or WTO
so that villages can be educated about a wider context of their work.

6. Appropriate technology experts, public health, water & sanitation engineers
who can improve qualify of life in the villages
e.g. should the swamp be drained to prevent malarial mosquitoes?

Direct the rebuilding of the cook houses (venting them?)
so that women do not respiratory diseases from all the smoke

Gutters on all houses to supply water
(but how to prevent that standing water from breeding mosquitoes)

Villagers request: a labor saving device that would pound cassava into flour

7. Doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, medical & dental students.

An international NGO built a medical clinic amidst these villages.

The clinic has never been staffed. Most villagers can not afford medical care.

Christine points to Cameroon on a map of Africa.

Hello World!  We’re heading to Cameroon, Africa.

I am working through NGOabroad and I have been accepted to assist with a women’s group founded on the principles of Social Action and Aid.

This organization was built largely by one very dedicated social worker.

She started with a dream and built it with her hands.  She found a building that could be both home and office.  She bought benches for their small school, for the women and children who were left out of school.  She barely ate so that she could set money aside for a computer, then a sewing machine, to teach vocational skills to un- or under-employed in her community.

It is people like her, tremendously committed people, who are changing Africa.

NGOabroad partners with grassroots organizations like hers that are very close to “the people” and understand their needs, so that their goals reflect the wishes of the local people.

We’re excited to be embarking on this journey in 2010.  Please check back often for updates!

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