Meet Miriamou Yaya

The beautiful makeup bags and purses that Breaking Ground is starting to sell were designed and made by Miriamou.  A graduate of our Women's Entrepreneurial Program, Miriamou is a 28 year old Fulani woman and mother of five. A vivacious and generous woman, as well as a fabulous cook, Miriamou is the social hub of the Tongo Pastoral quarter. Though she is rarely allowed to leave the house, the world comes to her kitchen.

Miriamou currently earns money for her family by completing small sewing projects from home.  In the future, she hopes to expand her sewing business and start selling pagne (the distinctive cloth used for Cameronian clothing and Breaking Ground bags) in her quarter.

Alex's Trip to Cameroon: Women in N’gaoundéré

After my adventure in the Lebialem Valley, the next major voyage on my trip was taking the train to N’gaoundéré. Unlike the roads to Folepi and Nkong, the train to Adamoua region is fairly luxurious: we slept in a four person sleeping car, we ate in the train restaurant and were offered “room service” for breakfast in the morning. Of course, you can also buy baton de manioc, peanuts, mangos, honey, mandarins and bananas from the train window at any of the station stops. We arrived surprisingly promptly at 8am and were greeted by Miriamou, a long time friend and recent WEP N’gaoundéré graduate.

After resting for a couple of hours, Paul and I set to work.  The goal of our trip was to see how the women who have received funding are progressing and to make plans for our future classes here. We visited as many of the grant recipients as possible, asking questions about their businesses, the class and their plans for the future. This part of my job is truly a pleasure as I love meeting with each woman and learning about her work and her family.  It is also very satisfying to hear what the women learned through our class, how their businesses have grown and to think about ways to support these women further in the future.

Above, I am filming Haira Oumarou as she shows me how to use the knitting machine she purchased with a grant from Breaking Ground. Haira used to have to rent time on someone else's machine, so owning her own both decreases her overhead, and increases her producivity. Though  not allowed to open a boutique in the market, and thus sell directly to a wide variety of clients, Haira sends the children's clothing she produces to stores, or to friends in the quarter. She told me that one of the most important things she learned in our business class was to value herself -her skills and her time.

Here I am speaking with Mbai Eunice in her vegetable farm. She received a grant from Breaking Ground in 2009 and used the money to expand her plot and purchase an electric water pump.  This expansion has allowed her to diversify her crops to include eggplant, tomatoes, lettuce, huckleberry, folere and corn. The pump allows her to keep all this delicious produce well watered throughout the dry season, increasing her annual yields.

Whilst in N’gaoundéré, I was also conducting surveys with the women, gathering the information that will help Breaking Ground design a basic family health curriculum that responds to the specific needs of the community. This part of my trip was more challenging.  As I listened to the stories of sickness in the family, miscarriages and the rising number of people in the neighborhood with HIV, I was further convinced of the importance of adding a health element to our classes. The need and the desire are palpable.

Alex's first week in Cameroon: Planting Palm in Folepi

After two days in the city of Dschang, meeting with our partner organizations and visiting the construction site at Keuleng, I woke up at 5am last Tuesday and hopped on a motorcycle to accompany Paul and his team into the heat of the Lebialem Valley.

Though I have visited Cameroon many times, this was my first trip into this remote and humid part of the country. I had heard horror stories about the quality of the roads and was prepared for a long, hard, muddy trek. Fortunately our moto drivers were experts and negotiated the road (which sometimes resembled a river) with expertise.

Not only is the road tough, but there is no cell phone reception, no electricity and very few improved water sources. The difficulty of accessing and staying in this part of the country makes our work there hard, but all the more important. The purpose of our trip was to conduct two day workshops in Nkong and Folepi, demonstrating the methods to properly peg and plant fields of improved palm and cocoa. If planted and cared for correctly these trees will greatly increase the income of these villages.

As I am not an agricultural expert, my role on this trip was to evaluate the women's business class, and to see how we can improve and expand it next year. This was a great way to start to get to know the women of Nkong, Folepi and Bangang as we discussed the class, their families and their hopes for the future.

The highlight of this week was probably our first night in Folepi, when the community gave me the title of MAFoLah Folepi, an honorary village chief, to show their appreciation for the work Breaking Ground is doing in their community. As with any moment of celebration in Cameroon, people gave impromptu speeches, the beer flowed and the community sang and danced the night away.

The rest of my schedule is as follows...

June 6th: Paul and I will visit the village of Balevang with our partner organization RIDEV to scope out the possibility of a future project there.

June 7th: I will be in Dschang, meeting with women who have taken the most recent WEP class and discussing the future class with the instructor.

June 8th: We leave for Yaoundé

June 9th: In Yaoundé to meet with COREDEC, the NGO with whom we have run the WEP in N'gaoundéré.

June 10th-15th: Paul and I will be in Ngaoundéré.  There we will meet with the women who received funding for their projects in the last six months.  I will also be enjoying the fabulous cooking of my good friend Miriamou!

June 16th-17th: We will travel to Buea to meet with potential partners CIC, Man and Nature and ERuDeF.

June 18th-19th: I will have a couple of days on the beach in Limbé. Taking the time to compile my notes and relax a little before my long flight home.

I hope the next two weeks are as inspiring and productive as this first week has been!

On est ensemble,

Alex Moore

Celebrating Cameroonian Mothers

Paul Zangue, Program Manager, with his family.

"Mothers’ Day is not celebrated in Cameroon, but mothers are a symbol which we respect and honor every day. On top of their traditional roles, Cameroonian mothers are gradually taking on more and more responsibilities. In Cameroon, women are increasingly becoming the head of the household and making the main contribution to family expenses because the husband is unemployed or makes an insufficient income. The Enquête Auprès des Ménages Camerounais (Cameroonian Household Survey) conducted in 2006, found that children raised in households where the mother is head of the household have a better likelihood of receiving a good education and are in better health. Even in households where the husband also earns income, the woman often takes full responsibility for raising the children and earns an independent income to pay for the costs of school and healthcare.

To accomplish this role, women often engage in small shops and other small businesses like selling donuts, farming, hairdressing or sewing. However, in their efforts to care for their families, they are still limited by the resources and opportunities available to them.

This is where the Women’s Entrepreneurial Program comes in.  In Cameroon’s rapidly changing society, where the lack of infrastructure seriously jeopardizes the future of children in this country, one wonders whether a greater involvement of mothers, with their sense of fairness and their foresight, would not ensure a better future for their children and grandchildren."

--Paul Zangue

 

Alex Moore, Executive Director, at the home of Miriamou in N’gaoundéré

"Though the roles of women differ between the different regions, throughout Cameroon Les Mamans
are the heart and soul of a Cameroonian family. Often responsible for raising not only their own
children, but the children of their neighbors and family members, a Cameroonian mother is ready to
feed an army at the drop of a hat. For example, Miriamou (pictured above, center) cooks a large pot of
something delicious (perhaps Folere with cous cous) every day, and gladly shares it with whoever drifts into her kitchen. She welcomes younger girls into her home for help with sewing, for advice, for support during illness. To help with family expenses she sews from home, as well as selling bags of frozen juice to the kids in her neighborhood.

Cameroonian mothers are the definition of strong women, juggling multiple roles and receiving very
little recognition (financial or otherwise). They toil long hours in their fields, cook in front of smoky
fires, can roll scalding hot sugar with their fingers or cut red onions without crying. In addition they may be a full time teacher, a student, a mother of four, and still manage to be impeccably dressed.

Most importantly, a Cameroonian mother will take great pride in fattening up her American daughter with an endless supply of plantains, avocados, macabo, beans and rice."

-- Alex Moore

Transparency Matters

A couple of weeks ago, the journalist Jon Krakuer published an article, 3 Cups of Deceit, that critiqued Greg Mortensen, his Bestseller, 3 Cups of Tea, and his nonprofit, The Central Asia Institute (CAI). If you are unaware of the story, in short the accusations are that CAI has been mismanaged, donor dollars misused, and that much of their "Founding Story" is more fiction than reality. The ensuing media debates have illuminated many of the reasons why international development is a complicated field but also reaffirmed the guidelines upon which Breaking Ground operates.

Respect: Breaking Ground's work is founded in respect for the communities that we work with. This is why we use local solutions and local expertise rather than importing our own technologies and ideas. We see our role as mediators, able to harness the resources our partner communities need.

Size matters: To work effectively with a community, you need to really know that community, listen to them, and care about them. This cannot happen if you are concerned with helping as many communities as possible, as fast as possible. Large aid organizations have their place, but when it comes to long term sustainability, we believe a small scale, intimate approach is more effective.

Accountability:  The role of this blog, our monthly newsletters and our annual mailings is to keep you, our donors and supporters, informed of our progress on the ground and show how your dollars go into action.  As Breaking Ground has grown we have come to rely less on the work of a few individuals and have matured into an organization that includes a team of volunteers, two staff members and an active board. Funding decisions are made collectively and with careful oversight.

Professionalism: Like many nonprofits we started with a set of good intentions, the trust of close family and friends, and little business experience. Also like many non-profits, we started out with no employees and were fueled by caffeine, sleepless nights and volunteers. This is not sustainable, and doesn’t allow for the kind of professional commitment necessary to ensure our programs have good oversight. Which leads into...

Efficiency of Dollars: Often non-profits are judged by the ratio of the dollars used on projects, to the dollars used on administration. This is fair and necessary.  However, good development takes long term commitment with a community, research, cautious progress and evaluation. All of these steps cost money, but are not as instantly gratifying as building a school. They also may not create as good of a dollar to dollar ratio for projects to administration.

Transparency: Currently our 990s are available on our website, but we have started to put up more reader friendly charts, and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. We have also posted the evaluation that we funded in April 2010.  This evaluation was conducted by The Research Insitute for Development and outlines clearly what they consider to be our strengths, whilst openly making suggestions for improvements.

Please feel free to call or email me if you have any questions about our 990s, our evaluation or our approach.

Alex Moore
Executive Director