Cameroonian families who didn’t forget where they come from
Owing to the major role played by African diaspora organisations and individuals in the African continent’s development, ADEPT, the Africa-Europe Diaspora Development Platform, is keen to highlight initiatives of the African diaspora based in the EU but also in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Norway. ADEPT works towards achieving a main goal: improving and strengthening the capacity and impact of African diaspora organizations involved in Africa’s development activities.
These initiatives can be structured around an associative project of more or less large scale. Sometimes, they are simply the work of one or several families, who, in complete autonomy, decide to put themselves at the service of others. This is the case of these Cameroonians in France, who, as the health crisis was starting, put their energy, time and money at the service of the most destitute in their country!
We retrace in this article this great adventure of solidarity led by three families whose sole motivation was to help, in their country of origin, citizens less fortunate than themselves, simply because they have never forgotten where they came from.
Who?
Three Cameroonian families settled in France: the MPOUANE DIKONGUE, the DALLE DIKOUME AND the DIPANDA KOUTTA decided to unite and coordinate their efforts in a spirit of selfless solidarity as crisis situations can sometimes produce.
Why?
Because, just like ADEPT, these members of the same family believe that their role, as Africans of Europe, is to help their compatriots, to give them the energy that will enable them to face their many challenges. The members of this family also say they have been marked by the lack of means at the scale of Cameroon to face the pandemic. Listening only to their impulse of solidarity and generosity, they decided to commit themselves in a completely disinterested way.
For whom?
This family initiative was initially directed towards the poor in the neighbourhoods of Douala (Bali Koumassi and Bonapriso) and Yaoundé Soa.
How did they do it?
On its “small scale”, this family community decided to act, concretely by offering funds to the Koumassi Development Association (KDA) in Douala and to a church in Yaoundé to help an orphanage.
At the same time, the families also provided protective equipment to combat Covid-19 such as masks but also soap and buckets of water. Finally, they raised awareness among the population about the need to respect the barrier gestures and made food parcels available to the population.
In doing so, these three families reduced the displacement of people and thus prevented the spread of Covid-19 and reduced its impact. Finally, they have generated economic activity for the 5 employees of the mask workshop, which may seem modest but is in fact not negligible. Indeed, Cameroon is a country where economic activity is informal and, moreover, is almost deprived of social protection. The pandemic has increased the precariousness, during the period of confinement, synonymous with the loss of activities.
