Cameroon: CHAMEG Lauded for Anti-Poverty Efforts.

 Mr.Yamakawa shakes  hands with CHAMEG Director ,Mrs.Agbor Meg

A Buea –based NGO called Changing Mentalities and Empowering Groups (CHAMEG) is increasingly being commended for its poverty-alleviation efforts by both government officials and foreign investment partners.

Shortly after senior officials of the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training led by His Majesty Melone visited CHAMEG, one of the beneficiaries of the Ministry‘s PIAISI program and commended it for living up to expectations, the NGO was last September 7 host to an expert of  the Japanese International Cooperation (JICA) , Yamakawa Hiroaki, who is also Technical Adviser for SME Policy Development (Ministry of Small & Medium -Size Enterprises Social Economy).JICA has been working with MINPMEESA to support small and medium size enterprises in the transformation of local products.

The visit was intended to get on the field assessment of what CHAMEG has been doing to alleviate poverty and empower groups.

CHAMEG organizes training workshops to instill modern techniques of farming, food processing and petty-trading to enable women engage in income-generating activities, thus rendering them self-employed.

Martina Agbor Tambe, Fako Divisional Delegate for Small and Medium-size Enterprises (MINPMEESA) who accompanied the Japanese expert Yamakawa Hiroaki, told The Recorder: “We had a workshop on small and medium size enterprise development. And the Japanese expert came to tell us how small and medium size enterprises work in Japan. It was kind of a comparative study”

Mrs. Agbor Tambe said the choice of CHAMEG for the visit after the workshop, was due to the fact that it is a leading training NGO in the Southwest.

At CHAMEG Muea road office, its founder/CEO Agbor Magdaline Nchong, warmly received her visitors and answered questions from them

Mrs.Agbor, who is a US -trained financial and marketing expert, told The Recorder that empowering the underprivileged has always been her concern and she would not hesitate to work in partnership with other development agents.

Courtesy:The Recorder Newspaper of 16 th September 2010,Cameroon