WHY VOLUNTEERING MATTERS: GIZ WEST AFRICAN SEMINAR IN CAMEROON

The GIZ Regional seminar for stake holders in Central and West Africa took place in Limbe, Cameroon from the 21-25 of November 2011. These programs are organized by the German Government. Each year young German Volunteers  are sent to different countries to volunteer for a year. During this time they live within the host country and learn the culture of the people. OGCEYOD has received two of these volunteers. The first was Paula Menzel who was the pioneer of the Read Beyond Border Project. After a year of working with the reading clubs and the in Between magazine for students, she was replaced by our current German Volunteer Louisa Well who is currently doing a marvelous job with the clubs and the magazine.    The aim of this program was to examine the  growth of the WELWARTS program sin Africa, analyze the role of young German Volunteers in the alleviation of poverty in Cameroon as well as to handle the pressure from more civil organizations to benefit from these programs. The meeting started at 8:45am with a word from the GIZ representative from Germany who expressed her gratitude for being in Cameroon. She thanked the partners and staff of GIZ for making the program work in Africa and she said that the forum will also be a place for them to know our challenges. The Human Resource Manager, Regina Johnson of GIZ Cameroon then took the floor with the same expression of gratitude. Sonja B. the coordinator of the Volunteer program then moderated the “Getting to know each other” phase of the program making the orientation sheet available to all participants. After this session which ended at 10am, Andre Feze then gave a rundown of the program précising when certain activities will take place like the coffee and launch breaks, movements out of the hotel and conference centre.  This lasted 1omins and participants then had 20mins break before the Presentations of the Weltwärts-programs of the different countries.Julia Gruzters and Augustin Hakizimana talked about the Weltwarts program in Rwanda. They work from Kigali but visit the rest of the weltwarts volunteers around the country three times a year. Questions were posed on volunteer lodging, Rwandan Weltwart office and administration, educational programs. Volunteers teaching English because there is a transition since 94 from French to English. So the weltwert volunteer support Rwandan teachers and students to learn English.

It is also very essential to point out that volunteers also learn the local language from the children. Tanja Dorn and  exposed on the weltwart program in Togo giving statistics on the volunteers and partner organizations with 10 volunteers – 11 partner organization in 2009, 16 volunteers / 13 partner organizations in 2010 and 10 volunteers / 9 partner organization 2011. The volunteers work with partner organizations in the following domain, Rights of children, women right, Next stop was Benin with Silke Bahn and Leandre Onikpo with 25 volunteers and 18 partners, and 4 weltwart workers in 2009, 18 volunteer in 2011 with 5 weltwart workers. At the end of the seminar, participants called on the authorities to ameliorate the current conditions under which the program operate and also to continue these programs in Africa.