CI-NEWS

Back-to-school campaign: CENPA swings into action.

2019-07-30

No: 438

Back-to-school campaign: CENPA swings into action.

The Cameroon English Language Newspaper Publishers Association, CENPA, has taken its school resumption campaign a notch forward. After securing some funding from international humanitarian organizations, the newspaper publishers’ association intends to swing into action in the coming days. It plans to assist 650 school-going children in the North West and South West Regions with didactic materials and a token envelope. The disclosure was made at a press conference in Yaounde last Tuesday. Following is CENPA’s press statement on effective school resumption in the North West and South West Regions delivered on the occasion:

The Cameroon English Language Newspaper Publishers Association, CENPA, hereby informs the public that as part of the association’s contribution for effective school resumption in the North West and South West Regions, come September 2019, it will offer didactic materials to the 13 divisions that make up the crisis-hit Regions.

These didactic materials would include a school bag, exercise books, pens, pencils, rulers, erasers and a token amount of money. Each of the 13 divisions will receive 50 school bags containing these items. In all, CENPA plans to assist 650 school-going children in the North West and South West Regions.

Aware that the crisis has crippled the economy of the North West and South West Regions, CENPA is by this gesture coming to the aid of parents who may not be financially viable to send their children back to school this academic year.

CENPA is greatly saddened by the fact that for three years running, children have been unable to effectively attend school in the two Regions. It is an established fact that by staying away from school, most of these idle children have become drug addicts, commercial sex workers, bandits as well as being involved in other forms of criminality. CENPA has also noticed with dismay that most parents in the North West and South West Regions have taken advantage of the school boycott to offer their young children as domestic servants in other Regions of the country.

It is important to note that in most countries affected by crisis, children have been allowed to go to school. CENPA believes that this situation should not be different in Cameroon.

Driven therefore by the resolve to see schools effectively take off in the two English-speaking Regions, CENPA solicited and obtained funding from some humanitarian organisations to match its back-to-school campaign with action. It is important to indicate that CENPA members equally made contributions to this back-to-school fund.

Besides the donation of didactic materials to encourage effective school resumption in the two Regions, CENPA is finalising arrangements to organise a workshop on Peace Reporting and Responsible Journalism for English-speaking journalists.

The first, expected to group 50 journalists from the South West and Littoral Regions, will take place in Douala from August 8-9, 2019.

The second, that will bring together 75 journalists from the North West, West and Centre Regions will take place in Yaounde from August 13-14, 2019.

Participants at both workshops will be selected from the print, audio-visual and online media.

Notwithstanding these efforts, CENPA is launching a fervent appeal to the parties involved in the conflict to give peace a chance so that normalcy can return to the two troubled Regions.

CENPA also joins its voice to that of national and international bodies for government to urgently initiate an all-inclusive dialogue without preconditions to end the crisis.

For and on Behalf of CENPA,

NGAH CHRISTIAN MBIPGO (The President)

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Back-to-school campaign: CENPA swings into action.