BAMENDA: AGYW Endorse Hate Mitigation

 




Adolescent Girls and Young Women AGYW leaders from different sociocultural groups in Bamenda, have acquired knowledge and skills on the different strategies used to overcome prejudice.


This was during a one-day capacity building organized by Common Action for Gender and Development COMAGEND with support from #defyhatenow Cameroon in Bamenda. Considering that Identity and context, prejudice was identified as one of the main drivers of violence in Cameroon, most especially in the North West and South West regions, wherein the participants were tasked to refrain from and rather uphold hate mitigation in their various communities.

According to one of the organizers, Sally Mboumien, the reason behind such an initiative, stem from the Anglophone Crisis which has lost the lives of many, started as a prejudice from an individual before becoming a community affair.


   Founder of COMAGEND Sally Mboumien 


“This is a group that is often left behind. They suffer the brunt of conflict, they are the highest victims but processes are so elitist that they forget about them. We believe that Adolescent Girls and Young Women in conflict have some particular issues that they need to tackle, and we are sending this group to go talk to them, so that they can start talking their issues and join the trend of changing our communities because if we don't engage Adolescent Girls and Young Women, we are leaving out 40% of our population in our communities, Sally Mboumiem said.


Taking the participants through strategies used to unlearn hate, Ms Sally, brought in a pyramid of hate which shows how prejudice such as scapegoating, identity base on race, language, religion can cause people not to live in peace and harmony.

To enable the participants to be vectors of hate mitigation, defyhatenow’s Kinang Derrick hands on strategies that will help them to deliver the expected results back in their communities.



Nfor Yvette a beneficiary of the training on combating prejudice and hate speech says she is going back as a different person.

“I have learned quite a lot. I'm going back ready to handle cases of addicts of different types and ready to handle conflicts. I'm going back very different. This time I'm going to preach the message and I believe the community will be highly impacted.”

Bih BendittTatiana also noted that the session was quite interesting especially with the methodology used in passing on the knowledge. “I'm happy for being part and pray God help me transmit the message to my community by forming these dialogue groups,” she added.


With certificates and other materials handed over to facilitate their work, these 30 AGYW who benefited from the training are expected to host Inter group dialogue sessions, create peace committees back in their communities through which individuals will learn how to work on their personal biases and combat prejudice especially in the face of the violent conflict experienced in the region. This is a three-month pass it on project, divided into three phases with the third planned to assess the impact of the project on the different communities.



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