familly pictures

In order to better coordinate on the field the actions of its Cameroonian partners, CMC, a catholic organization of missionary development based in the Netherlands, gathered together these one for a four days seminar from September 4 to 8, 2007 After a first edition held in Yaoundé in 2006, the aim of this second meeting, organized in the Climatic Centre of Bandjoun, was to evaluate the achieved way and to reinforce the CMC network in Cameroon as well as the pleading competences of its members. Based on the report that its various Cameroonian partners carried out, sometimes similar a field work that does not always beneficing the experiences from ones and others, CMC proposed as from 2005, to constitute a network of local organizations called to link their forces.

A first consultation held in Yaoundé in 2006 had made it possible to create this network and to release from them the principal axes articulated around three sets of themes:

- The improvement of the electoral process;
- The fight against the corruption and the embezzlements;
- The fight against the traffic of the girls for sexual exploitation.

Each one of these dimensions was placed under the responsibility for a "head of file", namely, respectively the National Service Justice and Peace (SNJP), the Ecumenical Service for Peace (SeP) and the International Circle for the Promotion of Creation. Shouldered in these tasks by the Islamic Higher Council of Cameroon (CSIC) and the Council of the Protestant Churches in Cameroon (CEPCA), the Cameroonian organizations partners of CMC were together at work.

The 2007consultation was thus the occasion to give a progress report on the projections in these three sets of themes. Each heading could present the activities which it organized within the framework of the network.
The SNJP thus described the way in which it took share with the observation of the last legislative elections in Cameroon, the difficulties to which it faced and the results obtained. For its part, SeP presented the project of fight against the corruption and the embezzlements which it currently works out. Lastly, CIPCRE showed how the fight against the traffic of the children for sexual exploitation falls under the network of CMC partners. This last set of themes being included in the Easter Week Camapign, it also rests on the local area network of the Orientation and Follow-up Committees whose presidents and secretaries were present at the training.

Following the evaluation of the passed activities, the discussions went on the reinforcement of the network itself. The fact that members put again too little of their forces and their resources was underlined and various strategies to solve it were elaborated. Among them, the installation of a coordinating committee itself animated by a focal point - role entrusted to CIPCRE -, the development of a networking charter and a better implication of all the partners in the main trends were adopted. The network also decided to integrate a fourth theme, namely "food sovereignty", while being given for objective to open up with other existing networks, like ACDIC, to increase its impact.

The last two days of the meeting were used to reinforce competences of the members of the network in the pleading techniques. With this intention, an experienced trainer was present in the person of Bernard Njonga, president of Association Citizen for the Defence of the Collective Interests (ACDIC). From his recent and profitable experiment in the plea against the importation of frozen chickens, Mr. Njonga could bring the participants to better understand the stakes and stages necessary of a step of effective and professional plea. Thanks to his support, the members of the network could trace the working contours of what remains to them to achieve their pleading goals. They also found a source of inspiration, concrete tools and encouragements to perfect their working methods. At the end of this second consultation between CMC and its Cameroonian partners, the latter are more than ever determined to make of their network an acting structure like a force of social transformation. This resolution is clearly expressed in the final declaration of the consultation where one can read the achieved way since the 2006 meeting and where the future prospects take shape through the project of charter, the installation of the coordinating committee, the integration of the topic of food sovereignty and the will to develop even before members’ competences, their collaboration and alliances with other partners.

Bernard Njonga, president of ACDIC, during his exposé		plenum session