Towards the establishment of a network for wetlands in Cameroon.
Within the framework of the celebration of the International Youth Day 2016 under the theme “The Road to 2030: Eradicating Poverty and Achieving Sustainable Consumption and Production”, some leaders of Cameroon Youth organizations involved in protecting the environment launched on the 13th of August the process of the establishment of a network entitled “Youth network for wetlands”.
This launching was made during a workshop on the approval of the logical framework document of the network.
The workshop itself was organized by Water For Life Cameroon with the support of GWP-CAf. It took place at the GWP-CAf Secretariat in Yaounde, Cameroon.
20 leaders from 10 youth organizations such as Water For Life Cameroon (W4L), Women In Development (WID), Jeunes Volontaires de l’Environnement (JVE), Centre de Recherche sur la Forêt et l’Environnement, Institut des Relations Internationales du Cameroun (IRIC), AJEVOH Cameroun, Cameroon Youth Initiative for Rural Development (CAMYIRD), Young Professional Platform for Agricultural Development (YPARD), United Voice to Serve Forest and Environment (USFE) attended the meeting.
During this meeting, Global Water Partnership Central Africa (GWP-CAf) shared its experiences on networking: GWP as a multi-players network with a vision and mission. This presentation aimed at strengthening the participants’ understanding of the structure and function of the network they wanted to establish in order to mutualize their effort in protecting the wetlands and underlining the benefits the communities will obtain from wetlands and also guiding youth leaders as a compass in networking.
In order to comment and approve the logical framework document, three groups worked separately to reflect on (A) the axes of priority actions of the network, (B) the mechanism of funding and functioning of the network (C) the structure and mission of the ad hoc committee in charge of producing the constitution of the network. Thus, it was the first and crucial step for the establishment of the Youth network for Wetlands in Cameroon.
In the plenary session, it came out that a rapid fundraising was crucial to the survival of any network. Therefore, each partner association must bring a financial support as admission fee to the network and an annual contribution. As far as the axes of priority actions was concerned, Participants claimed that they must be aligned with the existing national and international framework as the Document of Strategy for growth and Employment of Cameroon as well as the Ramsar Convention and SDGs.
At the end of the meeting, an ad hoc committee made of 6 persons was set up. This committee was charged to elaborate the constitution of the future network and define its structure. Meanwhile, the logical framework document to be submitted to the stakeholders was approved
