SIMON NDIVE KALLA
Limbe-based Non profit organisation known as Girls Excel, GE, has empowered 31 women and young girls to become trainers in their communities in a project titled; Girls Excel when empowered was targeted to train young women to become trainers in their communities.
The one day capacity building workshop took place on Saturday, December 11, 2021 at quarter 27, Mile 4 Bonadikombo, Limbe.
These young women were trained on how to make menstrual beads as well as washable sanitary pads. They learned about the menstrual cycle and menstrual hygiene management.
Since its creation in 2015, Girls Excel’s team has been passionate about empowering young women to give them better opportunities in life.
Mindful of the fact that the populations of the Northwest and Southwest region of Cameroon have been greatly challenged by the Anglophone crisis for almost six years now, the GE team made it their duty to take this training to the communities, hosting persons displaced by the crisis, so that beneficiaries from the training can ease their present difficulties.
Girls Excel partnered with W4 and JHO for the realisation and success of this project. The participants were young women mostly ranging from the ages of 11 to 35 years from internally displaced families residing within the Bonadikombo Chiefdom. Most of them are students while others are hair dressers, seamstresses, petit traders and teachers. The choice of location was due to the fact that this community is one of the host communities of internally displaced persons from the war.
On Friday, December 3, 2021 the team continued with door-to-door mobilisation, taking permission from parents and guardians, and writing names and contacts of potential participants. The program started with 31 participants.
The participants equally took turns in introducing themselves. The program continued with a talk on menstrual hygiene management and the making of menstrual bracelets led by Blessing Arrah. The ladies learned about the menstrual cycle, what to do and what not to do.
They were excited to get simplified explanations on how to calculate and understand their cycle. With the use of different colors of beads, the participants also learned how to make menstrual bracelets to facilitate their understanding of the 28 days menstrual circle.
The participants had a brief period of singing and dancing with Blessing Arrah after the beads were made, each participant was excited to wear their beads and personally know at what point their menstrual cycle was just with a look at their personal beads.
Next on the program was the training of participants on how to make washable sanitary pads. This session was led by Nicoline Ndingwan who took the girls through the measuring of the different fabrics, teaching them which stitches to use at every stage. All the participants were busy with thread, needles, pins, scissors and tapes on their assembled fabrics amidst chit chat.
The GE team led by Bibiche Etaka went ahead to distribute fabrics and other necessary materials to the participants to facilitates their making of more washable sanitary pads at home.
The participants expressed their gratitude for all they had learned and promised to become community trainers indeed.