Thousands of national and foreign volunteers have over the years made significant contributions in improving the lot of Cameroonians.
The 30th International Volunteer Day was celebrated in Yaounde on Saturday, December 5, 2015, with the Minister of Youth Affairs and Civic Education, Mounouna Foutsou, stressing the role of volunteers in development. In his speech read at the occasion, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, lauded the role played by volunteers in stemming the recent Ebola Virus epidemic in West Africa, adding that volunteerism transcends boundaries, religions and cultural divides. Meanwhile, local and foreign volunteers play a major role in the country’s socio-economic development.
National Volunteers
The National Civic Agency for Participation in Development has since 2012 trained 22,000 volunteers in income-generating activities like agriculture, livestock and fish farming. The 6,000 volunteers of 2012 received FCFA 770 million in financial assistance; the 7,000 in 2014 FCFA 518 million, while the 9,000 of this year will receive FCFA 480 million. At the end of their training this month, the 9,000 volunteers will also receive material support such as wheel barrows, machetes, seeds, fertilizers and other farming inputs.
During the celebration of the 2015 International Volunteer Day, the agency offered over 600 fruit plants to the eight State universities for the creation of orchards. These include orange, guava, coconut, mango, etc. The universities also received material to enable them take care of these orchards such as sprayers, sprinklers, matches, planting and digging tools.
Foreign Volunteers
There are currently 167 American Peace Corps volunteers serving in Cameroon in the areas of agribusiness, community health, education and youth development. All volunteers, regardless of their sector, are also involved in HIV/AIDS and malaria education as their primary assignment. In addition to their primary assignment, volunteers also work on a variety of secondary projects. These can include student/youth organisation, women's groups, library and community centre projects, literacy initiatives, water projects, etc. More than 4,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in Cameroon since the programme was established in 1962.
Former beneficiaries of the Korean International Cooperation Agency, KOICA, scholarships have been sharing their experience with different Cameroonian communities. Under the KOICA Alumni Association Cameroon, KAAC, the former students have since 2009 carried out a number of projects in the area of health, education, agriculture and training. They use Korea’s development experience that catapulted the country from one of the poorest in the world to a developed nation today.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA’s support to Cameroon is primarily focused on human resource, economic, agricultural and rural development. On the other hand, France Volontaires, formerly known as “l’Association Française des Volontaires du Progrès,” AFVP, was founded in 1963. It changed its name to France Volontaires since January 2010. Since the opening its office in Yaounde on June 30, 2010, the group today counts about 100 volunteers who spend two weeks to two years, working on development projects and different aspects of international solidarity.
