Welcome to CameroonONE
A multinational family dedicated to strengthening community by providing services that contribute to the people of Cameroon. CameroonONE is a Registered 501c3 Charity.
“Education is that whole system of human training
within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops
men.” (W.E.B Du Bois). These words are as true today as when Du Bois
first spoke them, but the concept of man has undoubtedly changed. Man
was forever his village; he was his parish, he was his school house, he
was his streets and well, but mostly, he was the people that shared all
these things with him. That was Community and man’s life, identity, and
future had once been compounded solely with those that could celebrate
and revere all the things that could undeniably be called by them, Ours.
As the world gets smaller and smaller, the definition
of what is Ours has improved. In this global age we can celebrate and
revere one another and disregard the distances between us or our
cultural variances. Community is no longer those who drink from the same
well, but transcends familiarity and has fantastically evolved into
those who share the same concerns. We are not borderless, indeed our
boundaries are the world and its prospects are communal. The children
within these margins are all Ours and the concern for their health and
security is Ours as well.
At CameroonONE we believe that concepts such as health
and security are forged by the collective education and positive
demeanors of our villages, neighborhoods, and greater societies. This is
both beyond the school house walls, through collaboration and the
constructive activity of the community entire, since “children
learn more from what you are than what you teach” (Du Bois),
as well as within those walls, because “to stimulate wildly weak
and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires” (Du Bois).
We seek a community where all excited minds, eager and impatient to
unearth their potential, are provided access to the education and
training they need and expect this learning to be the proper approach to
tune any society. CameroonONE sponsors the belief that the arousal and
inspiration of the inborn inquisitiveness of those raw and untreated
minds of the coming generations is
valuable to all that is Ours.
We advocate that it is the worldly obligation of our generation to
supply this training for them, for “it is the trained, living human
soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that
breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them
human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American” (Du
Bois).
In The Works:
In-Home Sponsorship Program
To date there exists in Cameroon no credible or efficient foster care system to provide for the parentless children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other ill-fated circumstances. Each year 1,100,000 Cameroonian children find themselves abandoned to the world with no immediate family members. The most fortunate are housed in a sponsor home and schooled in privately funded, self-operated, and mutually supportive communes. Others are placed in the care of elderly guardians, who, surviving solely by subsistence farming, can barely afford to provide these children with their basic needs, let alone the costs of a proper education. And yet others still are on their own and fending for themselves- the ideal formula for destitution and criminal activity.
Tragically, many of Cameroon's orphans still have caring and intimate blood relations who in their own conditions are incapable of adding another person to their household.
Youth Action Africa and CameroonONE are currently developing a program to confront this crisis. Our team has endeavored to expand on its existent Sponsorship Programs by establishing the first continental In-Home Child Sponsorships designed to support an orphaned child's surviving relatives. Our goal is to keep families together while freeing up the orphan communes for only the direst of situations. Relatives taking on the parental responsibilities of a niece, nephew, or young cousin will do so on a conditional basis. These homes will receive a per annum, circumstantially determined stipend with full understanding that it will be conditional and made available only as certain requirements of the child's rearing are met. These stipulations include that the child attend a decent school and maintain certain expectations in their evaluations, and that he or she is fully vaccinated and receives whatever healthcare that may be specific to their personal needs.
In conjunction, Youth Action Africa is developing a computer literacy center that will offer course curriculum in entrepreneurship and small business development as well as establish proficiency in a variety of computer programs. This program will be hosted at neighboring colleges and universities and will provide a platform for students to gain hands on experience by educating their communities. This program will be offered for free to orphans within these communities.
Besides the most evident beneficial aspects of the CameroonONE/Youth Action Africa In-Home Program (the families, children, and communes), the project produces wider advantages that help both the Cameroonian economy and the living standards of its private citizenry. The program can both reduce short-term poverty by directly providing a partial income to the impoverished and those most in need and ultimately fight long-term poverty by creating a more productive and competent future human capital among parentless children who may have received little or no education. Through our In-Home Sponsorships these children will have the opportunity to become valuable members of the community.
This initiative is a pro poverty alleviation project in line with the millennium development goals to reduce hunger and poverty, achieve universal education and reduce child mortality
Le Conservatoire International de Musique
Le Conservatoire International de Musique de Yaounde is an international music conservatory currently being developed in the Cameroonian capital, conceived to provide musical training and equipment to talented students in The Republic of Cameroon whose geniuses may be stifled by their limited means. The school was envisioned by internationally renowned musical classicist and friend of CameroonONE, Jacques-Greg Belobo, whose distinguishable bass baritone is celebrated around the world, in his adopted city of Dresden, Germany, and his native homeland of Cameroun. CameroonONE, along with her partners at Freesax, a California-based foundation dedicated to supporting music education, will be involved in several aspects of Le Conservatoire International de Musique by helping to sustain it, sponsoring its young students, and funding the salaries of its instructors.
Freesax is a foundation that sponsors musical education through monetary scholarships, provides free instruments to those students who cannot afford their own, and organizes concerts and musical events that fund musical programs.
Jacques-Greg Belobo was born in Cameroon, where he started his vocal studies in Yaoundé. He won first prize in the Concours National de Chant Classique, the Concours Aguimucla in Yaoundé, and the Concours International Diapason in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. He studied at the Conservatoire National de Nice, where he won the Gold Medal as well as the Operetta Competition in Rennes and the first prize of the Concours National de Chant Lyrique in Béziers, Concours National de Chant Lyrique in Ales.
Jacques-Greg got admitted at the Conservatoire of Music and Dance of Paris in 1998 and graduated in 2001. This chronic winner went on to win the second prize of the International Competition of Geneva in 2000 and five prizes at the International Belvedere Competition in Vienna in July 2002 including engagements with the Semperoper Dresden, with the Strasbourg Opera, the Kammeroper Vienna and a recital at the Philharmonic hall in Cologne.
He sings several roles and parts such as Il Grande Sacerdote (Nabucco), Kaspar and Eremit (Der Freischutz), Leporello (Don Giovanni), Vicar Gedge (Albert Herring), Polyphemus (Acis et Galatea), The Verdi Requiem, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Rossini’s La Petite Messe Solennelle, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Bach Cantatas or Fauré’s Requiem and is now a member of the Junges Ensemble der Bayerischen Staatsoper München, regularly performing at the opera of Gelsenkirchen. In 2003 he was chosen from singers around the world to compete in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, in Wales.
In addition, Jacques-Greg is very connected to his Cameroonian roots despite a very successful career abroad. He still performs in Cameroon and greater Africa and is very engaged in Development Projects for Cameroon.
CameroonONE News…
CameroonONE was in Douala, Bamenda, and Belo to initiate the preliminary stages of our In-Home Sponsorship Program. The In Home Program was designed to take kids out of the orphanages and place them in the homes of the surviving members of their families. It is loosely based off of the Brazilian government's Bolsa Familia program that provides monthly funds to families so long as their children are attending school and are receiving their immunization shots. This technique has proven successful and is emulated by competent governments worldwide. There is a need to address the orphan situation through a different approach than other organizations in the region. The solution is not simply to confine these children to the peripheries of society and conceal them in a compound in the corners of the community. The methods presently designed to deal with orphans and their families need to be reassessed. Relatives taking on the parental responsibilities of a young niece or nephew could do so on a conditional basis within an existing household. These homes would receive a per annum or quarterly, circumstantially determined stipend with full understanding that it will be conditional and made available only as certain requirements of the child's rearing are met. These stipulations include that the child attend a decent school and maintain certain expectations in their evaluations, and that he or she is fully vaccinated and receives whatever healthcare that may be specific to their personal needs.
With Hurricane Irene at their heels, CameroonONE members braved the weather at the Easton Country Club to compete in this year’s CameroonONE Charity Golf Tournament. We thank the sponsors of this event for making the day such a success and congratulate first place team Mike Fontaine, Danny Martins, Justin Bartha, and David Shnitzer.
CameroonONE was featured in the 2011 Spring Issue of the Suffolk Alumni Magazine. Read the full article by Michael Blanding here: CameroonONE Suffolk Alumni Magazine 2011
CameroonONE welcomes you to participate in our organization’s first Best Ball/Scramble Golf Tournament to benefit the children of our Sponsorship Program. We greatly appreciate those of you who have participated in our previous events and look forward to seeing our members again this August 2011. The CameroonONE 2011 Golf Tournament is your chance to spend a fun day on the course, enjoy great food and raffle prizes, provide great exposure for your place of business, and all while contributing to a great cause. Please take a moment and consider our sponsorship levels. This year’s event will be held at THE EASTON COUNTRY CLUB on Saturday, AUGUST 27, 2011. Advance registration is greatly appreciated.
Details can be found here on our Tournament Flyer and Registration Form:
CameroonONE and her partners at Youth Action Africa were interviewed by Mahdi Omar of the African Television Network of New England (ATNNE). The panel consisted of Roland Fomundam of YAA, plus Shaun Bamforth and Todd
Finklestone from CameroonONE. The group discussed their collaborative project of In-Home Child Sponsorships that are designed to support the surviving relatives of orphaned children in areas where the “foster system” is inexistent. Our team has endeavored to expand on its pre-existing Sponsorship Programs by establishing the first continental In-Home Child Sponsorships. Our goal is to keep families together while freeing up the orphan communes for only the direst of situations. Relatives taking on the parental responsibilities of a niece, nephew, or young cousin will do so on a conditional basis. These homes will receive a per annum, circumstantially determined stipend with full understanding that it will be conditional and made available only as certain requirements of the child’s rearing are met. These stipulations include that the child attend a decent school and maintain certain expectations in their evaluations, and that he or she is fully vaccinated and receives whatever healthcare that may be specific to their personal needs.
ATNNE'S SHOW from Mahdi Omar.
CameroonONE members congregated at The Stadium Sports Bar & Grill in South Boston for the first CameroonONE Charity Car Smash. The Smash was held in the parking lot and coincided with Stadium’s “Meet Your Future Ex” Anti-Valentine’s Day Party. Participators helped CameroonONE destroy a used Subaru to raise money for our current projects; each donator received two swings with the sledgehammer for their contribution. Immediately following the Smash, the band Cherrie Bomb performed for the attendees. This event was hosted by Bacardi Rum.
CameroonONE held its first annual Supply Drive during Thanksgiving weekend. Donations accepted included books, school and medical supplies, clothing and bedding. All donations will be received in Cameroon by local volunteers to ensure they go to the schools, hospitals, libraries and families that need them most. Your donated materials will travel from New England to Dallas, from Dallas to the coast, and then across the Atlantic to the Port of Douala to be received by CameroonONE partners for distribution. The overwhelming amount of gathered items consisted of surgical gloves and sheets, books, children’s schoolbags, toys and clothing. Thanks to everyone for your participation! CameroonONE will now be organizing year-round shipments from the States to Cameroon.
These are a few of the primary school students that CameroonONE is currently sponsoring in Bamenda and Buea. Many rural Cameroonian areas suffer from a large number of orphaned children whose parents have died prematurely due to illnesses such as malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS. These children are cared for by relatives, who often cannot afford to meet their educational and health care needs. As their guardians are often elderly grandparents, surviving by subsistence farming, the costs of attending school are rarely achievable. The CameroonONE students are the products of this situation. CameroonONE is currently providing health support such as medical check-ups and HIV tests and educational support in terms of school fees, textbooks, and school uniforms to these children as part of the Orphan Health and Education Program. Our children are offered a child-centered approach to education as opposed to the memorization and repetition techniques often practiced by the overcrowded government-run schools. Class sizes are small, corporal punishment is forbidden, and teachers provide individual attention. As a result of this approach, CameroonONE students are able to learn more advanced material than their peers in the public system. Our students have been placed in a sponsor home, and their tuition fees, uniforms, textbooks, supplies, school lunches, and transportation have been financed by CameroonONE members.
For more information about CameroonONE children and the Orphan Immunization Program,
see the October RUDEC newsletter. CameroonONE is thanked on Page 2:
CameroonONE friends, families, and supporters came out to Charlestown, Massachusetts on 13 August 2010 to preview the CameroonONE Website and celebrate the friends and family kickoff event. The evening was a success and thanks to the generosity of its attendees, we raised enough funding to begin financing the educations and living expenses of parentless children in NWP and SWP, Cameroon. Our guests were able to view Nicolas Angwafo directed CameroonONE Awareness Videos, navigate through the Website, and bid on auction items from Cameroonian traditional paraphernalia, tickets to local sporting events, and all day boating trips. We thank representatives from the Boston Pan-African Forum for attending, and especially to Dr. Willard Johnson, author of The Cameroon Federation (an extension of his dissertation "Cameroon Reunification: The Political Union of Several Africas") and co-author of West African Governments and Volunteer Development Organizations: Priorities for Partnership, for taking the time to show support and attend our Website screening. Thank you all again for your support and encouragement.