Eco-tourism supporting local community and environment

RUDEC supports many children and families in Belo, Cameroon and has had such a great impact on lives since its inception. To be able to do such critical work, RUDEC is supported through a range of income sources, one of them being from eco-tourism. Eco-tourism is a more sustainable way to visit a country; it’s about respecting, preserving and supporting local communities, environments, customs and cultures.

RUDEC partners with the Cameroon Association of Sustainable Tourism (CAMAST) who takes visitors on tours and trips around North West Cameroon. The profits from these tours and trips are put back into RUDEC for program implementation, including education costs for the children RUDEC supports and providing a wage for local tour guides.

North West Cameroon is a beautiful place,with rich cultural traditions and dances, sweeping 

landscapes and natural falls. Attractions include the Bamenda Highlands, one of the most beautiful regions in Cameroon. Visitors can go on tours for one, two or 10 days depending on time and interests. RUDEC and CAMAST offer accommodation and a range of activities for visitors including hikes of all ability levels, visiting waterfalls, seeing traditional dances and song performances, home stays, local site visits and tours of current community projects.

For RUDEC and CAMAST, eco-tourism is an effective and sustainable way to bring visitors to Cameroon, and importantly, support the local community.

Recently, Joshua (RUDEC Founder and tour guide with CAMAST) took visitors on a three-day tour around the region, visiting a tea factory and the lakes and mountains of the North West. This partnership between RUDEC and CAMAST gives visitors the opportunity to really see the Cameroon while being lead by an experienced local tour guide. It also helps draw important links and build relationships between visitors and the local community in a way that is positive and sustainable.

If you’ve always wanted to go on a unique adventure, consider going with RUDEC and CAMAST. It might just be the life-changing experience you’ve been looking for.

To find out more about CAMAST and tours, visit: http://www.camast.com/  

To learn more about RUDEC’s work, visit: http://www.rudec.org/de/orphans/ 

RUDEC is in need of a volunteer house, we have got land and are looking for philanthropies that could support them in their vision. See our page on fundraising at www.betterplace.org/p14642

benches delivered to secondary school

Good news again: 58 benches were delivered to GSS Ibal-Asha, sponsered by RUDEC via „Project Solution“ which is based in the U.S. Once more, we are very grateful to cooperate with such great people and initiatives, and it is especially remarkable that they decided to finance this project just through finding RUDEC and it’s work on the Internet. We had done othe projects with them like the water extension project, benches for students in school, and roofing of a classroom at Njinikejem village school. Thanks to Project Solution in the U.S. and our great sponsors!

photos by Ida Mederos

School is starting!

Education in Cameroon is not for everyone... it is expensive to send a child to school. People have to pay school fees, buy uniforms, books, school shoes, badges, school bags, exams fees... and not to talk about taking care of the health of children. RUDEC came up to seek ways to support these children. 

photo by Yuri Wahl Valle

This Monday, School has started and therefore bags and textbooks have been delivered to our orphans on Friday. In these days we were busy paying their school fees, packing the bags, and accompanying children to school.

 

Meanwhile the school preparations were running we had visitors from the U.S. They have continously sponsored 10 children at RUDEC. 

Todd and Shaun from „Cameroon One“ have been visiting Bamenda and Belo to see how everything is going and get to know better RUDEC and it’s work. Their plans in Cameroon were to create a network with another project in Bamenda that is called "Mankon children’s home". 

They have furthermore promised to see what they could do to sponsor more children at RUDEC. We are very happy about this news as we are always looking for new sponsors! Thank you!

 

 

 

RUDEC has not relent its efforts to reach out to children that they sponsored in the remote villages around Boyo division. Joshua visited Makwa Anabel who was discovered by a pastor about her drop from school because she got no person to pay her fees because the mother is widow twice,being a small farmer in a remote village of Bolem, filled with frustration, she was looking at where to have support to give hope to Anabel. RUDEC's focus on educating a child caught up with her and visited them with one of its volunteer Kelly, she decided to sponsor Anabel. Our visit this time was to see how she is doing and progress in school. She came 2nd position in a class of 56. We gave her school bag, books, paid her fees and a toothbrush

When there is hope there is a way

  We from RUDEC have some news: Summer School has finished now!. John, Pierrick and Ida, have been teaching for the last ten weeks and enjoyed it very much to teach the kids and have learned a lot from them ourselves by teaching as well. It was quite a challenge to keep around 30 kids of all ages from 5 to 15 interested in our subjects day by day but it has been very fruitful for them. The subjects taught primarily included maths, English, geography (including some lessons on natural disasters) and French.

 

Now the children will go back to school on the 2nd of September 2013 and RUDEC is preparing everything for the orphans to be ready on their first school day: New bags, school books and notebooks have been bought and sorted for every child and are waiting in the RUDEC office to be distributed.

John is going to leave us this week and goes back home after 3 months to complete his Disaster Management degree in England. It has been a very enjoyable and interesting time with him here. Although his presence here will be missed, we are very happy that he will continue to support RUDEC’s work through sponsoring one of our orphans.   

Photo by Yuri Wahl Valle

But we have good news to tell you as well: 3 new volunteers from Germany are going to arrive on the 17th of September to support RUDEC in the after school programme. It will be their first community learning experience, and we are excited to share it with them!

More good news is that Princess Martha, the youngest orphan in the RUDEC programme, is doing fine again. She has been to the hospital because of dehydration, but with the support of RUDEC and the Belo Health Centre she has recovered and is in good health again.

 We want to say a big thank you to all the RUDEC supporters, sponsors and volunteers out there wherever you are; without you RUDEC couldn’t exist and work as it does now!

And of course, we are always looking for further support on our current projects:

You can actively be helping us by donating to sponsoring a child, volunteering, spreading RUDEC’s work amongst your friends and helping us to build a new volunteer house for RUDEC to be able to host more volunteers at the same time, and to also host guest for future ecotourism opportunities in and around Belo.

Support us here:

www.rudec.org (our website)

www.indiegogo.com/projects/rudec-volunteer-house 
(Crowdfunding website for the new volunteer house)

Help Remedy become a school teacher

Meet Remedy. She’s 17 years old and lives in Belo, Cameroon. Remedy is one of the 55 orphans RUDEC supports through its Orphan Education and Care program. 

Remedy lives with her grandmother and has two brothers, one older and one younger. Sadly, Remedy’s mother, who was a single mother at the time, passed away seven years ago, so she has lived with her grandmother since. Along with her grandmother, Remedy also lives with her aunt and three cousins. 

Her grandmother supports the family through farming, mostly just to feed the family and there is not much left over to make any income.  Remedy's grandmother works hard to support her family, but being older has failing health and has lost almost all of her eyesight. Getting enough food, let alone helping Remedy with her education and healthcare needs is beyond what she can provide.

Generally, Remedy and her family eat what they farm, which includes corn, yams, potatoes, beans, guava, mango and papaya. When they have money they buy rice, oil salt and spices. 

Remedy is in Form 3 of secondary school and she hopes to one day become a teacher. She just recently moved up to Form 3 and we are really proud of her for working hard in school.

Teachers play an important role not only in a child’s life, but also in the lives and development of communities. Remedy will have a great opportunity to help others in her community when she’s able to achieve her dream. 

While RUDEC supports orphans, we do not run an orphanage. Children live with their extended families in Belo and its surrounds. We think it is important for children to grow up in secure, family-based environments with their relatives or caregivers. RUDEC provides access to education, food, nutrition and healthcare services. We help families with things like school and exam fees, textbooks and school uniforms and food assistance.

We make sure children stay health and provide access to vaccinations, HIV/AIDS screening, dental/eye checks and emergency help. We also give children support in education, whether that's through school, technical college or an apprenticeship, which enables children to choose their own futures and fulfill their personal aspirations.

You can help support Remedy by sponsoring her for just 36 euros per month or 437 euros per year. Your sponsorship goes towards providing Remedy with her basic needs as well as giving her a brighter future. Sponsor Remedy today (link to: http://www.rudec.org/node/16).

For more information about RUDEC's Orphan Education and Care program, visit the RUDEC website (link to: http://www.rudec.org/orphans).

RUDEC Extension in livelihood and conservations support in rural areas

One of the main objectives of RUDEC Cameroon is to empower communities in the rural settings on income generating projects and beekeeping is one of the projects that since 2002 carried out trainings with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) on beekeeping from Bayang-Mbo Sanctuary, 2011 it was extended to Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary and in 2013, we are in the Takamanda Mone  Landscape Project to train communities where gorilla guardians are from on beekeeping.

The RUDEC team of consultants led by Joshua Chiamba left Belo to meet with a WCS car from Limbe that will take us to the training ground. We got off at 5a.m and reach

Bamenda but 9am since we had to wait for the taxi always to full. Reaching the counter, Joshua had forgotten his identification card behind. He left Bamenda for Belo back again to get the identification card. Wisely as he was, he had to call his wife to send it through a taxi that he would collect on a nearby park at Bambui. He got it by midday and was back at the bus station that we had to take to Mamfe.

The road network from Bamenda through Bali, Batibo then Wedikum that has a boundary with South West region has a good tarred road by a Chinese company that we couldn’t have the name. From the high mountains we could see palm trees that started indicating to us that people around produce palm oil. We

reached by 3:45pm and were welcome by the great heat and all people saw us as strangers in the land.

We went on a motorbike to the WCS and Forestry rest house that we were welcome by a young girl. She opened the doors and let us in and we left our luggage and hurry out to look around town. Soon we saw coconuts at a roundabout and since we don’t have them at Belo, each of us had one each, break them and asked for a knife that we clean them, wash and started eating. We walked into town and bought handkerchiefs to clean off the waste water from our faces. We saw meet with the WCS project manager that was coming in from Limbe that same day. We left and look for food ate and make plans for the next day trip.

The next day we took off at 8am and got food in town and started our adventure into the forest were every village that we pass, children shouted “Wildlife” and when you shake hands to say bye bye, they are very happy. We approach a river that does not has a bridge and I was wandering how we saw cross. The WCS car which is a Land Cruiser of Japanese origin made its way toward the floor of the stream. The skillful driver(Victor) used his experience and we crossed the river. There we got words like “Akwaya motor di swim wata”(Akwaya car swim in water).We all made prayers that rains should not fall so that the river

should not over flood. The road was Bumpybut with 4x4 car we move on and on until we reach the training village of Mbu. Here children and adults like photos especially when you take and show them how they look.

The participants arrive too on this day and we ate and drink palm wine together. The village people gave us food again and welcome us into their village. This village could have about 250 inhabitants all of them hunters and farmers. Most of the houses here thatched and beds mould with mud to for a bed and they add a mat to it and it’s very comfortable to sleep. Here in this village men and women watch in the streams at different sections.

We started training on 3 day with all 10 villages working with gorillas attending. We had a total of 29 participants. We access indigenous knowledge about beekeeping and went with the training and at each stage we had practical. At the end of four days effective training, each participant went home with a hive, bee suits and working tools to help them train other people in their village and make more hives.

The field manager of WCS took the participants to take care with equipments and when the reach their various villages should present them to their chiefs and let them decide where to keep them safe. He also told

them that all the equipments are a sign of encouragement and they should show love by training others in their villages so that they could also use the materials donated by WCS and CMS.

At the end of the training period we had a party with the participants and the villages. We had palm wine and “disco”(music) played by village chairman is the richest person in the village. Many people in the village said this was more than the Christmas parties in the village. This also means they villagers were happy.

We hope to continue to train these communities when we have the means and partners that have interest in beekeeping should join us in our struggles as we strive to tackle conservations in our little corner.