info@recdev.org
Way-In Nkwen, Bamenda, Cameroon

Our Views, Our Voices (OVOV) Cameroon:

Welcome to Our Views, Our Voices (OVOV) Cameroon! for Persons Living with NCDs

“Nothing for us without us”

Our Views; Our Voices- Cameroon

Purpose of the Group:

A RADA initiative with overall objective to understand the needs, challenges and priories of PLWNCDs to inform advocacy efforts.

Rationale: Persons living with NCDs are experts of their own situation. Their real experiences, needs, challenges and priories are often overlooked, misunderstood or not taken into consideration on decisions that affect their care, support and lives in general. The presence of technology facilitates our ability to connect support and meaningfully engage and include persons living with various NCDs in policy advocacy. An Online Platform has therefore been created to facilitate this engagement.

Modalities: (What to Expect when you join):

  1. Consultations on your needs, challenges, priorities and concerns
  2. Inclusion and engagement in the Cameroon advocacy agenda for PLWNCDs
  3. Events and opportunities will be posted for PLWNCDs to be meaningfully engaged in advocacy for better care and support
  4. Prioritize active participants in events and opportunities.
  5. Online support via our Advisory Team of Clinical experts on medical concerns (Interception of concerns: not e-consultation).
  6. A calm, locked and well regulated group in which only for admins post except when opened during conversations on specific topics or on specific days of the week for Q&As.
  7. Last but not least; you will be expected to adhere to and maintain confidentiality as part of the group.

Your Invitation

If you are living with an NCD, or know anybody living with an NCD, regardless of their age (above 15 only), and/or profession, we invite you to join the OVOV group here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/KkxXfaHJZy5LV2BpMPMPdB

The above information also serves as your welcome information into the OVOV group.
Again, Welcome; and share with other persons living with NCDs or their Care Givers; whom you think we need to hear from.

Let’s Join the Voice of Persons Living with NCDs and let their Views and Voices be strongly asserted.

Communications Team, RADA
Contact Email: Info@localhost

Pre-needs assessment survey on Entrepreneurship Empowerment for Young people with a Vocational Trade.

Many families in town get baby sitas from the villages. The promise is always to either put them in school or help them learn a trade. Several young people also go to vocational trainings and after their graduation, they tend to find their way to odd jobs or practice the skill they learned as an income generating activity. But how many of the latter succeed?

I know of a cousin who learned shoe making. He could really make shoes. His mother even helped him establish a shoe making business. But it could not be sustained. He went forth to become a security guard. He did not have allied skills in business, entrepreneurship despite the fact that he could be one of the first to make “made in Cameroon” shoes, stronger than most imported shoes we get.

RADA seeks to identify and strengthen the skills of young people who have dropped out of school or did not have a chance to continue school, to empower them with additional basic educational and entrepreneurial qualities that will support their trade and advance their lives.

A consultant has been hired to conduct this survey in Bamenda. This is one of the hardest-hit areas in terms of Internally displaced persons, as a result of the ongoing anglophone crisis. If you know persons that fit this category, please contact info@localhost or reach out directly to

Dr Sevidzem Courage.
Research consultant, RADA Entrepreneurship Empowerment Project

Email: couragesevidzem@yahoo.com

Phone: /Whatsapp: 675 551 812

Statement by the Reconciliation and Development Association during the Week for Action on NCDs, from September 7-13, 2020 on Accountability

Brief Background:

Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) are silent killers. Non transmissible from person to person unlike COVID-19, and are driven largely by four main modifiable risk factors – tobacco use (cigarette smoking), unhealthy diet (excessive fasts and sugar), physical inactivity (overweight or fat deposits), and harmful use of alcohol.

Some of these diseases include; cardiovascular diseases which accounts’ for most NCD deaths, or 17.9 million people annually, followed by cancers (9.0 million), respiratory diseases (3.9 million), and diabetes (1.6 million). In 2018, the United Nations High Level Meeting on non-communicable disease added Mental Health and Pollution resulting in a 5 by 5 framework approach to preventing NCDs. Each year, NCDs account for 41 million deaths globally, with 85% coming from the low- and middle-income countries.  35% of annual deaths in Cameroon are due to NCDs.

Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, persons living with NCDs have been provide to have highest risks of severe outcomes. About 80% of COVID-19 deaths are recorded with persons living with NCDs. We’ve seen through COVID-19, the devastating effects of inattention to certain groups of our population providing universal health coverage. We also need to build our health system to be ready to respond to crisis comprehensively. NCDs are a major cause (and consequence) of poverty and a barrier to economic and social development.

 “Investing in population health to solve the problem of NCDs makes economic sense” – Prof. Jean Claude Mbanya, Chair, Cameroon NCD Alliance

The ActOnNCDs Campaign:

We have made plans, promises, and political signatures on global goals as well as commitments to fight against NCDs.  It’s time to keep these promises by Acting on issues related to NCDs.  The Global Week for Action on NCDs is in its third year. Each year, it is conducted to raise a voice for NCDs. For 2020, under the theme «ACCOUNTABILITY” the Week of Action aims at reawakening people on the dangers of NCDs as well as unite the NCD movement to recognize that accountability is not just in finances, but also in what we promise to do. Accountability is a crucial force for political and programmatic changes that will reduce the NCD burden of NCDs not just in Cameroon, but globally, improving the health of the population.

As RADA, we are affirm that community development is incumbent on a healthy society, hence, call on health, trade, finance, agriculture and other sectors of both government and the society to give heed to the benefits of investing on a healthy workforce and population by Acting on NCDs where their responsibility lies.  

Actions such as those below are essential:

  1. We need to ban sales of alcohol to youth and children below 18 years of age.
  2. Tax unhealthy products such as (high sugar and fatty content foods)
  3. Educate on moderation and appropriate feeding by the population.
  4. Continue to promote physical activity
  5. Ban the illegal sales of tobacco and drugs such as tramadol.
  6. Promote an end to conflicts that inflict mental health stress, pain and suffering

OUR ROLE AS RADA

As a member of the Cameroon Civil Society Non Communicable Disease Alliance, we are running a National Youth NCD Action Network to raise awareness among youths, and support them towards walking the talk on NCDs. We add our voice to the efforts being made by the government as well as the entire NCD community in Cameroon to increase access to care for persons living with NCDs and re-iterate that more specific interventions needs to be implemented.  

Together with the Alliance, RADA is ready to support, partner and collaborate with stakeholders to accelerate the implementation of national commitments on NCDs and Universal Health Coverage towards the fulfilment meaningful community development.

Thank you.

Ferdinant M. Sonyuy
President/CEO, RADA.

About RADA :

RADA is a community development organization based in Bamenda. Our mission is to promote community development by building bridges to sustainable solutions in the domains of health, education, agriculture, technology and peace. More about RADA on www.recdev.org

Tweet Chat with Food and Genes Initiative

“Acting on NCDs must start from understanding the root causes that lead to NCDs” Samuel Ogunsola; CEO of Food and Genes Initiative, Nigeria.

To mark the NCDs week this year, we are delighted that in collaboration with the Food and Genes initiative, the CEO of RADA will be facilitating a tweet chats on the risk factors responsible for NCDs.

The link is www.twitter.com/foodandgenes

Also follow RADA on twitter at: @Recdefcameroon.

RADA Welcomes 1st set of Volunteers

On June 9, 2020, RADA’s first set of full time volunteers were welcomed. Moses, Lodence, Christabel, Irene, Eric, Lipsia and Joy. Selected from a cohort of 35 applicants, these volunteers will enjoy the benefits of learning from practical projects and activities within RADA.

The CEO of Alibaba, Jack Ma, says, “When you graduate from university, work in a start up organization. That’s where you learn passion because nothing in life can be accomplished without passion”.

Volunteer Orientation Session- 2020

It is our hope that these volunteers will exhibit the skills they have learned as most are fresh graduates from school. This is a peculiar set of people as volunteering is hardly part of the current culture of most youths. We wish them a successful period of volunteering.

Our next cohort will be launched in September 2020.