January 12, 2008

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/holistichelping/message/1758

Dear Andruis, How do you do? I’m sorry that I went out of town for one full weak and only returned last night. I did not have any access to the internet while in that village where we were carrying out a workshop on Treatment Adherence Nutritional and Psychosocial Support for people living with HIV/AIDS/malaria and TB. Andrius, to be very honest to you I will like to let you know that I am leading thousands of rural women, youths and children in our community here for the past years we have been working on HIV/AIDS related issues especially the lack of a treatment access for them. Some of our members equally produce some traditional handicrafts that can be sold in local markets here to raise funds. We also have a group medicinal garden where we grow some varieties of herbs to treat some opportunistic infections of PLWHA. The herb to treat Malaria as we are in the risk zone of malaria called Artemesia is also grown. Presently we have 526 people living with HIV/AIDS who are registered in our office. These people need a lot of care and support especially nutritional support as a few of them are on Antiretroviral Drugs now. There are also 191 orphans we registered from our deceased member since the creation of our NGO on September 1st 1989. These orphans need support in clothing, feeding, school needs like fees, books and uniforms etc. since most of us are living below the poverty line, it is very difficult for us to manage all these without money. We have not had any project sponsored till the end of 2007, due to the bottlenecks in sponsoring projects in Cameroon between the English and the French. Janet Feldman is one person who knows how we have been struggling to survive as well as be able to sustain our NGO over all these years. There is also a research that we have been doing on Artemisia used to treat Malaria for people living with HIV/AIDS and also research on “Missing the Target Series”. That is trying to monitor and evaluate as members of our Civil Society what our state is doing with AIDS Funding that comes to Cameroon. We so far have done two hard copies of this research in 2007. If you are interested in reading you can go to www.aidstreatmentaccess.org. So, Andrius if we had an internet access, we would be able to improve our communication beginning with our members within and then make more contacts build partnerships nationally and internationally with AIDS activists. There is a lot we could download from the internet that can help us to educate our members and our clients as well especially our orphans. We need the internet facilities to use on a daily basis as well as more computers since we have a large membership. Within this membership, we have over 1000 active youths that have joined our NGO who are already volunteers willing to help go into the local communities to identify most vulnerable orphans and PLWHAS or TB and malaria patients. These youths and women have joined hands as volunteers to do counseling, training of trainers all for free. We gather food stuffs, clothing, soap and other needed items from community members and share to PLWHAS and orphans. Our participants all do these activities and we all feel that we can do more if we have more computers and an internet access of out own. One good laptop will be the best to add to our dream of 20 computers as we can easily carry around the information in flash sticks and laptops to other groups of our distant from our head office. Cyber cafes near us are far. We need to take a taxi or walk a long distance from Commercial Avenue to Nkwen about 3km – 5km apart. The current cyber café nearest to us for one week now is closed down as you could buy one hour for 300 FRS and will not be able to type or send a page. The lines have been very slow and all who buy time there complain but we have had no choice than to buy many more hours in order to send two or more emails at a time. Other cyber cafes that are a bit fast are far and expensive 350 – 500 FRS for an hour. Many cannot afford due to lack of the means. So we really need flash sticks, computers and a connection for ourselves. As for the room we rented we paid 75,000 FRS for three months and pleaded to the owner that we shall install the computers and then complete 9 months rents to make one year since he told us that he can reduce the rents from 30,000FRS a month to 60 dollars a month. When we rented this room we wrote to you and copied Janet maybe these letters never arrived. That is that about our problems shared. Last week I sent to you some names of our members and here now is the continuation of the list.

6)FONSAMBA COLLETE M A E-mail: anjeh2006@... Tel: 77798600 7)SHAIBU ISYAKA E-mail: shaibub75@... 8)H PALALU ABUBAKAR E-mail: hapalab@... Tel: 77847504 or 99876888 9)CHE ERNEST CHI E-mail: yrenexmail@... Tel: 75288179 10)CHENWI IRENE SIRRI E-mail: intimacyforall@... Tel: 77785340 11)LOVERT SHIYKA E-mail: lolosha2001@... Tel: 77820037

FONSAMBA COLLETE M A E.mail:anjeh2006@... Tel: 77798600

The availability of computers and a wireless internet access to help others will be of great help to me, the clients (the HIV/AIDS people and orphans) in the organization and the general public. This will help them to download information’s on what will be helpful to them thus build up their technological know how. The presence of these facilities will help them to communicate to others in the other side of the globe. My deepest value in life is to be well informed and to be able to have access to the new technologies around me and I think computers and internet access are one of the new technologies now. So being well informed through the internet will help me share with the clients of the organization and the general public. The presence of an internet service is world wide, Why is it that the accessibility of internet services in my area is still a problem? Concerning my current internet access, that is still a problem about its location and site. The location of the internet services are a distance to reach and are expensive to afford for an hour to work. I do use the internet but not often. In a month I can visit the internet at least five times and at most seven times to download or browse some information and not all due to its poor accessibility thus have to forgo some because of no means. The cost of internet services varies in that in some places it cost 300frs cfa, some 350frs cfa and others 500frs cfa. So due to all this there is no standard cost for internet services. My participants especially the HIV/AIDS people and the orphans will need some computers and internet services in other that there can achieve some technological advancement. For the HIV/AIDS people there will be able to know other infected people around the world and able to communicate with them like sharing ideas thus increases their lifestyle and not to fill neglected in the society.

Proposal from ActwidKongadzem

Dear Andrius, Immense thanks and congratulations for the first episode that quotes but Janet and Wendi)ACTWID KONGADZEM as we shared our thoughts. I read it and copied it to share it our members and they were very excited to to read it too; We all are thanking you for being such an *includer * yourself too for we have our minds opened widely to actively be participating in M.S. Lab work as it is really very interesting. We were away from the internet cafe for five days as we were working with some other village women in a distant village Mbokjijah which is still lacking both pipeborn water and electricity. Since there has been very heavy rains these days here, many of these members had their property carried away by floods including alot of maize, cocoyams and beans recently harvested and dried in farm hurts together with some homes built constructed very closed to the streams that were also carried away. A community school has just started too in this village and today is making their third day in school and our organization was there to support the children especially the orphans )five)starting school there with some food stuffs and uniforms; That is why we could only return yesterday to find the Sisterhood Episode from you.

We will also like to refer you to our project plan for the Includer too which we have conceived roughly to have three main parts of our project included which we suggested to be as follows;;;

a) Making an impact in the lives of the poorest village women and children here in three villages for a start and the ones we have selected are Mbohkijah,Shiy and Sop villages in Jakiri Subdivision.Here we are thinking of using about 5000 usd for microloans where women can borrow and buy improved seeds of a variety of foodcrops and vegetables to be grown to improve the poor nutrtion here as well as Artemisia seeds and other medicinal plants to cultivate, pay labour on part of their farms so that cultivation of large hectares can be hoed faster to meet the planting seasons. then making garri) from cassava) for consumption and sales which has been identified as an additional dish to add to the daily eaten fufu corn and vegetables with beans.Another small part of this amount will go to buy cells phones two per group to communicate with us and other groups nationally . Mbohkijah and Shiy groups have no electricity and water but they can trek to one neighbour who has brought a generator to his compound from luckily working out in the coast of Cameroon and charge the cell phones there.

b) We have thought of equally budgetting another 5000usd to set up a good airy internet connected room with about 25 pentium four good computers where we shall rent this room, employ a well trained computer technician with both hardware and software skills who will take goos control of the computers and two women will also be trained to work two shifts in this computer and internet room In addition, a good photocopier, printer and scanner will be bought from this same amount to add to the computers. Here now some few selected women leaders )30 for a start ) from villages without or poor electricity will be trained on computer usage for 9 months their by improving integration of gender concerns into ICT policies and programmes since we envisage too to carry out a study on the use of ICTs and impacts they have on poor rural women all from this same budget.

c) The third concerns that we looked at too was the creation of a small bank still in our office facility where our members women and some inteligent youths whom we have identified to have a keen interest in studying an advance stage of computer hardware and software detailly can loan small amounts to buy their own one computer each and one flash drive and other tools needed to do practicals if they happen to benefit from trainings we all feel that you will arrange and organize when this your great project takes up effectively.Our youths here will join the exchanged trainings in Kenyan,Minici Soda lab. in Luthinia or anywhere else where you Andrius and other M.S. team members will decide to do these trainings of trainers who should then come back to their various groups to in turn train more members too.Women who are educated or semi literate will be selected to be trained too alonside the youths as we will surely be handing our battons to youths as we age along the line to our graves for sustainability of our project. Here too we are thinking of improving our production of traditional crafts that we have been producing so that these crafts can attract the international markets ,so some selected skilled producers can be given microloans from a budget of about 4000 usd envisaged for all these activities, thereby bringing a rough estimate of about 14000usd for the first three years of your project.These are our dreams for a good project that can inturn assist all classes of poor rural women,youths and children that we work with in our organization.What do you think about these dreamed project of ours for the new innovations for Africa that you have conceived?

Immense thanks from Wendi Losha Bernadette, national president and members of ACTWID KONGADZEM NGO in Cameroon.

Earlier Letter

---Andrius, This is Wendi Losha Bernadette, I am happy that i had an opportunity to have good time and also access to the internet today. So i have read all notes you and others have communicated and i am really impressed. I will like to let you know that we all in ACTWID KONGADZEM RURAL WOMEN¨S NGO will like to sign in as a member of the Minciu Sodas worknets. Here we all work for HIV/AIDS/ORPHANS RIGHTS and issues. We also have another branch of our organisation which is a subset of ACTWID but this is a different branch registered separately called INTIMATE FRIENDS INTERNATIONAL ) IFI ) Common Initiative Group. This one is for rural women, youths and children living with HIV/AIDS only. All these groups need an internet access as well as good training in the proper use of computers. We will equally like to ask for your assistance to get these two groups registered on your worknets lists together with your other collaborators lists like Franz Naradah, Janet, Samwel Kongere, Sasha, Maria and others. Thank you immensely. Wendi and members

AboutThisPage

• ProposalSummary=ActwidKongadzem, a women's organization in Cameroon, has a 14,000 dollar proposal for a three-year project to help the poor and link their villages with the Internet.
• ProposalStatus=Next steps?
• ShopWithUs=ActwidKongadzem proposes a 3-year, $14,000 project in Cameroon to link villages with the Internet.

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