Tata Sonita

When the story of the EU-sponsored Nkumu Fed Fed project “Stop Violence Now against Women and Girls” is told, the empowerment of some 200 Girls and Women in four quarters of Nkwen in the Bamenda III Sub Division in the production of washing soap will also be in the records.  The training in the making of washing soap was brief but will be a lifelong endowment, employment, and a means of economic empowerment. Not sooner were they through with the training than some of the participants started the production of this basic utility. Almost immediately, it could be seen as a poverty reduction means and a termination of overdependence on others for the provision of their needs, a thing which often would lead to disagreements and gender-based violence. Even when not produced mainly for marketing, the production of the soap for home use cut down on home expenditure along those lines.

For my part, it was a superb privilege to have been selected by Nkumu Fed Fed to become a GBV ambassador. The training we received was exquisitely lucid and explicit on the basics of gender-based violence, its causes, consequences, as well as the prevention or response to GBV cases. Thanks to the training, I was able to educate the participants on Gender-based Violence. I also identified cases of GBV and its causes, and empowered them with the production of powder washing soap so as to enable them to prevent and respond to GBV.

As feedback, we have had packs of positive narrations and expressions of gratitude from the participants who brandish their soap-making skills with so much gratitude and a sense of achievement. They also tell of how much their families and households have been empowered. It is with a sense of much gratitude that I look back to thank Nkumu Fed Fed that led me into this. I keep receiving congratulatory messages from those whose lives I have so impacted.