Women urged to engage in volunteerism for change

The Cameroon Red Cross, CRC, and the Korea International Cooperation Agency, KOICA, have called on women to join in ensuring a better society through volunteerism.

The call was made in Yaounde recently, during a joint picture exhibition during the commemoration of the International Volunteer’s Day. This year’s event was celebrated on the theme: “voluntary women, actress of change.”

The main objective of the exhibition was to create awareness in women and the society at large on voluntary works and how it makes women autonomous in the society.

According to Aeri Lee, a volunteer for KOICA based in Bamenda, the act of volunteering is brave, heartwarming and a wonderful decision that even men around can make and move along with women. Working as a Computer Teacher in GBHS Mbatu, Bamenda, she said, has drawn her closer to her dreams.

“I think I am autonomous and have my dreams which were to always be in the midst of children. I discovered that always being in offices would never lead me to my dreams so I decided to be a volunteer where I would find happiness.

Despite the cultural and ideological differences between Cameroon and my homeland, I find pleasure in what I am doing as a volunteer,” she disclosed. Pledging the support of every woman to help facilitate their job, she said being a volunteer is the best job which does not earn money or material things, but provides a heavenly reward and boost one’s happiness.

The Coordinator of the Programmes for KOICA, Rodrigue Nganzi Nino, lauded the initiative undertaken by the KOICA female volunteers to promote development and called on Cameroonian women to join the race in order to effect positive change in the lives of people. He however lamented on the fact that most African women are not opened to such activities.

“Being a woman or not, you can volunteer and change the world positively making it a place to be for every individual. All one needs to do is chip in his or her talent and make the world evolve,” Nganzi noted.

He told The Post that the KOICA have dispatched volunteers to several parts of Cameroon since 2010 and that they are specialised in different domains notably education, health, agriculture and local development.

KOICA, it should be recalled, works in synergy with Red Cross Cameroon, France Voluntaire, the United Nations Volunteer Programme, CUSO International, and Civitan Cameroon to develop measures for development through volunteering.