“CAMYOSFOP is focused on educating Youth and Public on moral and Traditional Values” -Eugin Ngalim Nyuydin CEO

Eugin Ngalim Nyuydin is the Chair Person for the Peace and Security Cluster of the Economic Social and Cultural Council of the African Union. It is a people centered organ of the African Union. It is where the civil society sits and it is an organ just like other organs in the AU with the commission in Adis Ababa. It is an organ like the Heads of State’s Assembly, the Pan African Parliament among others. It provides advisory opinions to the work of the Union. Eugin Ngalim sits in that organ as the Cameroon representative. There are two people per country that sit in this organ. He is equally at the helm of CAMYOSFOP, Cameroon Youth and Student’s Forum for Peace. He spoke to EDEV Web News’ Francis Ekongang Nzante Lenjo on Thursday October, 29 at the Holiday Inn Resort in Limbe during a Feed Back Workshop on the National Youth Network on the Boys To Boys Strategy on violence against women and girls (NAYONEB) and strengthening their capacity on engaging Cameroonians against HIV/AIDS, an initiative supported by UN Women, a United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Among other things, Eugene Ngalim discloses that CAMYOSFOP carries out its activities through the education of youths and Public on moral and traditional values.

What was this Workshop all about?
It was a feedback Workshop of a network known as Boys To Boys on violence against women and girls in Cameroon. This network was the first of its kind in Cameroon and Central Africa as a whole and as far as West Africa because we know that this type of initiative exists in East Africa known as the Men To Men strategy against women and girls particularly in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The network like I said is aimed at working on ending all sorts of violence against boys and girls.

Eugene Ngalim Nyuydin

What do you expect from the participants of this workshop after this?   
Well there is an action plan that has been revealed and adopted. What we expect is an implementation of some of the aspects of the action plan. There are some of the aspects that do not need finances. They just need commitment and they could be implemented. Giving visibility or raising awareness about violence where ever you are doesn’t really involve money. We have the global campaign on He For She gender equality which simply involves going to the website of the campaign and signing in on the website. It is about scaling up the network by getting more Cameroonians involved.
You are talking about violence against women but women were completely absent here today.    
Many of the strategies that have been put in place involving women to fight violence against women have failed. Most of strategies that are being put in place involve women’s groups or men and women but this strategy of bringing just men is because they are the perpetrators of violence and most of these men have been neglected in most of the strategies. But again, there are certain things that men just within themselves will say that they will not be able to say when they are with women. We don’t know whether it may be inferiority complex or just trying to project themselves as a superior beings to the women but when they sit together there are quite a number of things they will say within themselves and take real commitments and so that’s why we are having this strategy where the network is just men. The work is however focused on engaging both women and men on ending violence.
CAMYOSFOP has been there for a while and considering its aspirations, how far do you think they have been attained?
The network has existed just for one year but there are quite a number of things the network has realised on ending violence against women based on our experience on the ground. In 2012 we were able to organise a climb on Mount Febe known as the Mount Febe Climb on Violence against women. This brought together about three thousand participants. We were barely replicating a continental event that took place in Tanzania known as the Mount Kilimanjaro Climb aimed at ending violence against women. Immediately after that, we engaged in an advocacy to launch a global campaign in Cameroon known as the African Unite Campaign on violence against women. This was UN Secretary General campaign that was being executed all over the world. We succeeded in this advocacy and at the end of the day, the Government of Cameroon accepted to officially launch this campaign in Cameroon in December 2012.
What can the public know about CAMYOSFOP which has been the main organizer of the event here today?
Cameroon Youth and Students Forum for Peace is a youth organisation created in 1999 with official legalization by the Government of Cameroon in 2001. So you can bear with me that the organisation has been on the ground for more than 15 years. It was created as a result of our decaying values and so it is focused on educating youths and the public in general on their moral and traditional values. This is done through Human Rights Education, Peace Building and Youth Policy. So far that’s what we do. Our programme focuses on Peace Education which includes Human Rights and Moral and Peace Education. On issues of Youth Policy we develop Policy Papers in favour of the youths. We have actually developed three of such policy papers. The first was on employment and migration, the second on Agriculture and Vocational Training as a gateway to youth employment and a third one was on the Education Sector Reforms for Youth Employment. We also work in campaigns against violent films and the illicit proliferation of light arms in Cameroon. This particular programme gave us an Award in 2005; The King Mohammed and The UN Continental Award on youth led initiatives in relation to the indigenes. I just wish to recall that last year we won another award from The Guardian Post Newspaper in Cameroon as the best NGO that has been involved in the campaign against the illicit proliferation of small and light weapons in Cameroon and Africa. We also do exchange programmes and we’ve been able to bring American youths to Cameroon and vice versa. Exchange programmes are important because through it people realise that their perspectives sometimes are different from the perspective of others. We work on promoting National Figures and one of those figures we’ve been working on is the late Doctor Benard Fonlon. We are presently working on publishing a Manual on the legacy of Fonlon. The manual will include testimonies from his contemporaries. This we have already done and the project has been going on for about ten years. That’s why many of the people from whom testimonies were collected are dead. We have testimonies of people like V.T. Lenjo, E.T.Egbe, Victor Anuma Ngu, Arch Bishop Paul Vedzekov, Sankey Maimo and a few others so this testimonies are now being edited. We are also trying to get one of the last publications that Fonlon was trying to come out with but never published which of course is a manuscript. It is known as the Path Finder. This manuscript is lying at the Major Seminary in Bambui. It is going to be a manual on the legacy of Fonlon.
One of the main aims of this initiative is that in a year each Region in Cameroon should have about a hundred members in the network. How many members do you have so far and what do you intended to do with these members?
At the moment we already have about 50 members and the campaign is about awareness raising. When you do this and you get the numbers then you make the campaign more popular. That’s why we are also calling on journalists to join us in this campaign.