Cameroon – Improve access to quality education

28 January 2020

(ANS - Yaoundé) - Sad news has been emerging from Cameroon for years: clashes, deaths, poverty, misery ... In 2020 it is expected that the country will face one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history. According to the United Nations, Cameroon is facing a "double humanitarian crisis": hunger, on the one hand, and political problems on the other. The UN estimates that 4.4 million people will need humanitarian aid in 2020 and that children and adolescents will be the ones who suffer most.

The Salesians have not stopped working, being there, and are aware that the situation can be reversed thanks to an educational proposal. The Spanish Salesian NGO "Solidaridad Don Bosco" announces the start of the first phase of construction of the "Salesian secondary school extension  in Yaoundé" project.

According to UNESCO, the United Nations agency for education, science and culture, only 27% of the country's children are enrolled in primary schools. Teachers must strive to encourage pupil participation, given the reality that surrounds them and the environment in which children live. The situation of the population is complicated; together with the 271,000 displaced people from the far north of the country, and the 700,000 displaced in the West due to violence, children and young people must leave school and walk unsafe, uncertain paths, without the security of being able to study.

To improve access to quality education for vulnerable young people in the Mimboman neighborhood of Yaoundé, a three-story building has been designed which will be built through three modules and will include classrooms, laboratories and offices.

The project will allow to increase the number of young people who will receive an education; and it will also allow them to complete the educational cycle, extending the educational offer also to the baccalaureate.

The central module of the structure, which has started to be built, will have a total of 12 fully equipped classrooms. Taking advantage of the dry season - the rainy season in Cameroon runs from May to November - the whole area has already been leveled and the foundations have already been laid.

In the coming months, the building will be completed before the start of the next school year, 2020-2021, thus ready to welcome new students.

The Salesian missionary José Maria Sabé Colom has been working in this Salesian center dedicated to Don Bosco in the Mimboman district of Yaoundé for 27 years. Together with his confreres, he is firmly convinced that in Cameroon it is very important "that all religions are involved in an educational project", a type of ecumenism that missionaries experience every day. As Fr Sabé Colom says, this "gives rise to friendships between Muslims and Catholics and, therefore, a more solid society", and all this also responds to a "style of evangelization".

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