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 organised by Girls Excel took place recently 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 the creation of girls excel in 2015, the team has been passionate about empowering young women so as to give them better opportunities in life.
Mindful of the fact that the populations of the North west and South West region of Cameroon have been greatly challenged by the Anglophone crisis for six years now, the G.E team made it a duty to take this training to the communities hosting persons displaced by the war 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 and 35 years old from internally displaced families residing within the Bonadikombo Chiefdom. Most of them are students while others are hair dressers, seamstresses, petit traders and a teacher.
The choice of location of quarter 27 Mile 4 Bonadikombo 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 guidance, writing names and contacts of potential participants. The program started with 31 participants with introductions, Blessing Esuma presented to the participants, Girls Excel, W4 and Jho.
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 Esuma. 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 colours of beads, the participants also learned how to make menstrual bracelets to facilitates their understanding of the 28 days menstrual circle.
The participant had a brief period of singing and dancing with Blessing Esuma 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 section of the program was led by Nicoline Ndingwan She took the girls through the measuring of the different fabrics, taught them the 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.
All the participants were happy to have been able to make their washable sanitary pads by themselves. The GE team led by Bibiche Etaka went ahead to distributes fabrics and other necessary materials to the participants to facilitates their making of more washable sanitary pads on the their own.
The participants expressed their gratitude for all they had learned and promised to community trainers indeed. After the photography section, all the participants settled down to have snacks, drinks and water.
Cross section of participants during training
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