Where: Cameroon and Sierra Leone
Area of Work: Education, Women's Economic Empowerment, Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in the context of COVID19
Social Development International (SODEIT) facilitates social and economic empowerment of girls and teenage mothers in Cameroon¡¯s poorest communities by providing sustainable solutions through local education, health care, training, empowerment opportunities based on an approach that ensures basic human rights, compassion, and service to humanity. The Girls, Teenage Mothers Empowerment project has provided schooling to hundreds of primary and secondary school girls, 40% of whom are orphans. This project further expands to a Global Training Academy project with the aim to help improve educational gender equity. It works to provide radio and online materials from elementary to university level to well-qualified girls and women from rural areas, in order to build a diverse workforce needed for today¡¯s and tomorrow¡¯s best job opportunities. It aims to train girls and young mothers in the field of health care, ICT, entrepreneurship, administration and finance.
In Cameroon, the switch to digital learning has not been wholly effective. Inequality is still present in the system and prevents women from gaining equal access to the virtual classroom experience. As well, a lack of the resources and tools necessary to succeed persists. Therefore, one big challenge they faced is to decide the most ideal way for preparing girls for digital learning in Cameroon. With the help of SODEIT¡¯s volunteers and professionals across the world, they identified all possible remote learning issues, for example, the balance between independent study and guided teacher sessions, challenges of virtual schools, and the exploration of multimedia outlets consolidation in E-Learning, and finally found the most suitable solution to fulfill the needs: the educational radio program. Educational radio programming that is both exciting and interactive can be an excellent tool to keep children engaged in academics. The reliability of the radio even in some of Cameroon¡¯s most rural areas can be used to relay school lessons. And when these are supplemented by packets that are carefully curated, it helps reinforce the information. SODEIT will keep building their global training academy and contriving a curriculum for their courses, which will be tailored for communities in Cameroon. Social Development International will continue to inspire women to innovate and use their voices to build the futures they want to see as change agents in their communities and the globe.
Video and Photo provided by Social Development International
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