Empowering Civil Society Organisations Empowers Humanity
The United Nations defines civil society organizations as non-profit voluntary organizations that are separate from the state/market that exist for the betterment of society.
Civil society organizations, like ASCOA, are important because they help empower communities to become a stronger and safer society.
For us, the community is our primary concern. We believe in fostering empowered individuals who will band together and form stronger communities. By doing this, these communities will have the skills and resources that they need to give themselves an improved quality of life.
We do everything that we can to be able to empower these communities by providing them with the skills and education that they need to be self-dependent. Through self-dependency and self-reliance, communities can live up to their fullest potential and live better lives. The work that we do with women and children truly epitomizes that mission.
Here at ASCOA, we believe that children are our future. By empowering our children, we help encourage them to be the greatest versions of themselves and bring forth a brighter future for us all.
One of our main projects aimed for children was done in Tole, a village in the South West Region of Cameroon that has been devastated in recent years due to the HIV epidemic, lack of medical care and poverty among other things. Here we introduced the Peace Crane Project where we performed a variety of initiatives including-:
Sharing messages of peace, especially to dissuade fighting among the youth because we believe in nurturing a united, safer community.
Campaigning for the education of young people as we discovered 80% of the children don’t go to school and are forced into street hawking. Providing books and equipment to schools and paying for the fees of some of the children. Empowering women and young girls are another important priority of ours. Often in these communities, the women suffer many human rights infringements and they grow up unsafe.
As they are deemed unequal to their male counterparts, it’s difficult for them to be autonomous so we hope that by teaching them basic skill-sets such as hair styling and farming activities, they can make a living out of those skills and won’t have to be dependent upon the men in their lives.
Another demonstration of our determination to better the socio-economic situation of these women is through our collaboration with Forest Economics Africa Ltd where we help set up entrepreneurship training for young mothers in these communities.
Empowering civil society organizations is important because it doesn’t help individuals to simply give individuals money and then run off, leaving them to figure it out. That’s like putting a band-aid on a wound rather than treating it directly. Instead, it’s better to provide people with the skills and resources they need to empower themselves. People want to help themselves and we can help them do that.
In other words- by empowering civil society organization, we can help empower communities which in turn, empowers humanity as a whole Because when we all come together, we can become a stronger and greater society.