Rachael’s Return to Cameroon

In July 2017, Rachael Eben returned to Cameroon in the middle of the Anglophone war in the country. She met with “dead schools” and internally displaced children who had already been out of school for the 2016 academic year. Disturbed by more calls for “no-school” in the 2017 academic year, she quickly raised her worries with Remi Mbah and together they decided to do something. This resulted in the teaching of12 internally displaced children, and Remi giving lessons via Zoom, especially in Math and Science. Remi also made sure the children had a safe space to study by paying the bills and the rent.

Suddenly, the number of students increased to 21 in 2018 as more children became orphans and internally displaced as the crisis persisted. There were also fears that the children could become “child soldiers”. By 2019, there were reports that some children were already carrying guns in the conflict-ridden Anglophone regions, and the 33 children that crammed altogether in her spare room for classes urgently needed to be better served. Together they decided to be more proactive and they then dug into their personal savings to formally register Glorious Kids Nursery and Primary.

Today, 121 pupils are enrolled in the school in the 2021 school year.

Glorious Kids Foundation Cameroon

Glorious kids Foundation (GLOKIDS) is a fully registered non-governmental organization (NGO) in Cameroon, with Authorization No.306/G.37/C84/Vol-F/SAAJP of 21 April, 2021, in accordance with the law of 1990 governing the functioning of non-governmental associations in the country. Having been founded in 2019, the registration of the association was impeded by the menace of COVID-19 and so obtained full registration only in 2021.Based on experiences gathered from living and working in three different continents, Glorious Kids Foundation founders had a strong desire to make a difference in the lives of children, youths and other at-risk persons in order to alleviate poverty that is persistent in most local communities in their home country. On this score, the approach has been to use education, sports, community development initiatives- such as arts and culture, a community library, support for victims of HIV/AIDs, (internally displaced as a direct result of the ongoing conflict in the Anglophone regions of the country), environmental programs, school garden programs, computer training and most especially, to add a completely new tag to education in Cameroon, the introduction of STEM education, with  strong emphasis on technology- through coding, in order to give the deprived children a heads-up and head-start in life.                        

An action-oriented NGO based in Cameroon with a focus on educating young minds made vulnerable as a result of being internally displaced from the ongoing conflict in the country. Glorious Kids is, therefore, focused on providing education, safe shelter, capacity building, sports, arts and culture, vocational training, a community library and other initiatives meant to take the victims from the cycle of poverty. This has been done through direct action by providing school uniforms, sportswear, pullovers, school lunch and even didactic materials in order to bring some semblance of hope to this at-risk group who would otherwise be steeped in illiteracy, poverty, despair and hopelessness.

This initiative seeks not just to impact these children from underprivileged backgrounds, but also hopes to enable them excel brilliantly, which most deprived children do not always have the opportunity to take advantage of, in the country. Being a country with a young population, Cameroons educational needs of the population are steadily increasing. Yet, the attainment of primary school education is not always the reality of most children from poor backgrounds whose parents do not always have the available financial resources to meet the high financial costs of most regular schools. Glorious Kids Foundation is therefore, determined to help fulfill the needs gap of poor children who would otherwise not receive any veritable education and would be forced to remain in the cycle of poverty which characterizes the life of most children deprived of education. 

In addition to the internally displaced, others such as orphans who have been identified from the Anglophone crisis currently rocking the county, street children, at risk young people, vulnerable women who are now widows, teenage mothers from the Anglophone crisis, and those maimed from the war; both physically and psychologically, are also served to by the program. Even those who cannot afford the high cost of tuition in the regular schools, and who have ended up as either drug user, or school drop-outs are offered a new beginning by Glorious Kids Foundation programs, in order to make sure that illiteracy and poverty are eradicated from the community.

In order therefore to attain the goal of extricating these vulnerable groups from the cycle of poverty, the organization is perched on three main axes: 

• Education
• Poverty Alleviation
• Social Sustainability and Community Development

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