Widows
WHAT WE DO/ WE NOW FOCUS ON
· Poverty Reduction
· Capacity Building
· Gender equality and leadership
· Disability rights( we have blind widows )
· hygiene and sanitation
· Community Development???
· HIV/AIDS & Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights
1) Outreach
Counselling and care activities for widows and their children on a one on one basis and also in groups. Counselling is done by mobile teams and targets mostly rural unemployed widows and their children, women living with HIV/AIDS, AIDS orphans and the community as a whole. Bereavement counselling will also be carried out. The purpose of this is to help the widows and their children understand the mourning process, cope more effectively with and recover from the loss of their loved ones. This aspect of bereavement is completely absent in our culture.
Counselling and care activities for widows and youths on a one on one basis and also in groups. Counselling is done by mobile teams and targets mostly rural widows and their families and, unemployed youths, people living with HIV/AIDS and the community as a whole.
Creating sensitization avenues for widows & youths:
Community/Resource Mobilization to enable widows and school drop outs who are sexually active receive appropriate information on family planning, HIV/AIDS and opportunistic diseases, property rights, reproductive rights, book keeping, gender issues, hygiene sanitation and body care.
2) Educational Programmes
a) Vocational Training:
Green planet provides vocational and professional training on (fashion and design) tailoring, computer skills, farming, poultry, piggery, small-scale businesses, teacher training programs , nursing programs etc, to the beneficiaries of the rural areas of Mamfe and sounding villages. Currently, it has an enrolment of 200 widows from 10 different villages and 104 youths. The mission of this Association is to empower the beneficiaries through entrepreneurship, education and skills acquisition, health issues and to strongly promote the notion of Training in Production or Production in Training.
3 a) Community Based Primary Healthcare
Through its community Health care volunteers (Doctors, Nurses and widows mostly), Green planet carries out sensitization, preventive and curative healthcare visits to rural areas. This includes regular home visits, treating simple illnesses, construction of pit latrines in villages, encouraging attendance to clinics by pregnant women, making referrals to hospitals, distribution of vital vitamins, educating the elderly about menopause and distribution of one a day vitamins for the menopausal widows, family planning and Health Education.
b) HIV/AIDS Education and Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights
Under this, Green Planet carries out sensitization campaigns and equally promotes and encourages voluntary counselling and testing of the beneficiaries and the various community members. Home visits are organized to Home based AIDS patients, orphans and vulnerable children in rural areas. Since HIV/AIDS is highly linked to poverty, tackling HIV/AIDS without poverty has been a major handicap in the HIV/AIDS project. It is against this background that green planet decided to initiate a Livelihood Programme within the HIV/AIDS project. Under this a demonstration farm, poultry and a piggery will be set up to impart the beneficiaries with modern agricultural techniques. Green planet will be technically assisted in this project by experts from the Ministry of Agriculture and livestock and, national Volunteers. More of such farms will be setup in villages if opportuned to have more funding.
5 – Training
Training is one of Green Planet’s key strategies and is also at the heart of most interventions. Green Planet organizes and runs regular training sessions on issues that affect the beneficiaries. Training turns around issues such as responsible agriculture technics to curb climate change effects, business, health, teacher training programmes, fashion and design, auto mechanic, hairdressing, computer literacy economic (book keeping) etc.
6-Community Sports for Development Project:
Under this project, green Planet will use the power of football to mobilize widow’s children and school dropouts to channel their energy toward productive initiatives. The activities of this project include inter village football competitions, clean up campaigns in villages by young people, cooperative farming, thematic discussions and tree planting.
7-School on Wheels Project:
The school on wheels project is an innovation of GREEN PLANET ASSOCIATION, as an attempt to take elementary education to out of school children or those who are somewhat backward in class, who live in the rural areas or villages of Manyu Division of the South West region of Cameroon. It will also cater for remedial reading program in order to enable school going rural children start, stay in and complete school. It will also help them improve on their academic performance, keep up with their grades and boost their self-esteem.
The purpose of the School on Wheels is the enhancement of educational opportunities for rural based children .The goal is to close the gaps in the education of these children and provide them with the highest education possible.
The activities include:
-One-on-one tutoring
-Backpacks and School supplies
-Assistance in entering school
-Remedial Reading
-Parent guidance in educational matters for their children’s success.
-Nutrition issues