Advocacy workshop with women from Civil Society Organizations in the North West and Southwest Regions, in Buea

Buea from the 22nd -23rd of July 2021 at Mountain Hotel. UN Women brought together over 60 women from Civil Society Organizations in the Northwest and Southwest Regions under the canopy of Second Chance Education (SCE) Project to create a women’s advocacy platform for education of women in Cameroon. The four protracted complex crisis in Cameroon continue to exacerbate vulnerability more on women and girls as well as increase school dropout rates for women and girls.

UN women recently extended SCE project to the Northwest and Southwest Regions to reach more women and girls and improve their wellbeing and resilience through SCE project. SCE Project aims at breaking current trends and provide comprehensive solutions for marginalized women and young women who have missed out on education and who are at risk of being left behind.   Considering that SCE Program leverages partnerships, holistic approaches and innovative technology to break current trends, and provide a comprehensive solution for marginalized women and girls, UN Women thus brought together these CSOs to become one of the stakeholders that would be advocating for women and girls’ education. Alongside creating a platform that will advocate for education of girls, these women also provided quality inputs to the results of the needs assessment that was carried out in the Northwest and Southwest Regions.

These women enriched the needs assessment results by highlighting feasible activities as well as potential partners for effective implementation of SCE project in the two Regions. Participants gathered more knowledge and lessons learned from the presentation of results of SCE in the first five pilot sites and were motivated to provide their support for the successful implantation of SCE in the two English-speaking regions.

Acknowledging the importance of media in the awareness raising for education of women and girls, many media stations including national and private stations (CRTV, CANAL 2, Equinox, Ladies News and HITV) were highly engaged to cover the event, produce documentaries and broadcast nationwide for wider sensitization.