International Day of the Girl.

“Girls have a role to play in the development of Cameroon”

Adah Mbah Muyang, Executive Director, Mother of Hope Cameroon-MOHCAM

Adah Mbah Muyang spoke to Edev Newspaper on Thursday October 11, a day commemorated as the International Day of the Girl. The Executive Director of Mother of Hope Cameroon on this day organised a workshop at the Cameroon Baptist Convention CBC Center in Bamenda to mark this important day celebrated under the theme “With Her: A Girl Skill Force.” She was interviewed by Francis Ekongang Nzante Lenjo

On such an important day for your organisation what would you like to put across to the girls?

Girls have to understand that they have a role to play in the development of Cameroon. It is important to break the silence and give the opportunity for young people to strive to be future leaders. As a girl coach, I have three things to tell the girls. Firstly they should be prayerful and secondly they should be hopeful that the crises are going to end one day and that our country will be peaceful again. Thirdly, they should stick to their books despite all the odds. We wouldn’t want women who are not educated. To do this they will have to stay away from bad friends.

Talking about child marriage, many children are now getting married. Displaced girls who have become vulnerable in the homes where they are now. The children are under high pressure and they cannot be able to control their emotions. Some of them may be forced to commit suicide. Some of them may be saddled with unwanted pregnancies and may be pushed to carry out abortions which may take their lives. They should stay safe by abstaining and getting the right friends.

We also encourage them to be responsible in the way they talk, in their relationships, in the food they eat to stay healthy while we hope to regain a peaceful atmosphere. 

What inspired you to start this initiative and to what extent do you think you have been impacting upon the lives of girls in Cameroon?

The nature of my profession pushed me into this. I teach and I have been doing so for 17 years and I have been more concerned with the output of girls as far as results are concerned. Many girls register for end of course examinations but when results come out, very few of them succeed. You don’t find many girls with top quality results. I decided to carry out a survey to find out those things that were responsible for this situation. Among the many questions that needed answers I needed to know what was it that kept girls away from doing sciences. I noticed that girls have other issues that stream from their homes and society. These issues have to be addressed before we get what we expect from our children.

Concretely speaking, what do these Girls need?

Psychologically, they need assistance at home. They don’t have enough information about what they need to be able to do what they want to do. They don’t have access to computers, to technology, to the things which their peers in other countries have. They are like in a cage. We expect so much from these children without giving them the much need psychological support. Parents, the community and government need to provide recreational centers to be able to see that they achieve their potentials.

I therefore took upon myself the responsibility to start talking to girls and engaging them into leaderships and teaching them the basic things that they are supposed to know. Giving the basic values that they are supposed to have as humans and also to break the rule that marriage is the optimum goal of a woman. They need to go to school and only get married at the right time and get their children at the right time. We need to accompany those girls because we put them in a situation of blame all the time.

As a girl coach I had the opportunity to go to good schools like PSS Mankon and CPC Bali and I was engaged in Religion and picked up values that make me what I am. But the children in Public Schools like Government Schools and Lay Private Schools don’t have these values and they constitute the majority.

When did you create Mother of Hope?

I decided to create Mother of Hope in 2010 and began talking in many schools. It was voluntary. We encouraged girls and female teachers to be able to maybe mainstreaming gender in their studies and taking cognizance of the inclusiveness and that every girl counts.

We do not only work in the North West Region. We work in the South West and Center Regions as well.

What concretely have you been doing?

We have been able to engage in so many empowerment programmes. We carry out an engaging programme with girls and show them how to become what they want to be in future in three stages of life. The first stage is you have to be able to tell us what you want to become in the early ages of 10 to 15. The next stage in life that you have to ask them yet again what they want to become in life is at the ages of 18 and 19. When they get to 20 or 22 we come again with the survey on what they really want to become. So there is a follow up like mentorship. The girls have mentors. You see the girls we have here with us are children that we have taught and have been with for years and some have gone to the university and some are graduates from the Gender Department at the University of Buea and are now taking full volunteerism. It is a kind of trans-generational issue.

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