The Self Help Development Group, remains the backbone of the organization in relation to its Community activities. It provides the opportunity for the community to contribute towards identifying their needs, design projects, and in the case of children, identify and protect the neediest ones in their care.
This enables them to appropriate and control the community projects, thus enables them to assume ownership of the project.
Children within the SHDG system, are protected by the entire group members. Hence none of such children is left behind anymore. Anyone found abusing such children will be confronted by the group directly, as the person is working against their values, ethics and principles of the group, as their mission is to protect such children within the community.
The Self Help Development Group is also designed, to enhance the development of Economic Empowerment Opportunities for their members, by encouraging them to get into “NJANGI”, savings and loans activities.
To mobilize a community into a SHDG takes time as it is a process of creating the needed awareness and change within a community. Different people take different length of time to adjust to change, the time of mobilizing one community to another differs. This is to discourage the idea of waiting only for handouts from development and humanitarian organization, but to also get themselves involved in income generating activities.
Hence, the SHDG approach focuses on Education and Economic Empowerment as the way to enhance social inclusion and the way out of abject poverty.
Here is the President of the LIKOKO SHDG, Mrs TAMFU Salif.
She is a church Leader of the LIKOKO Presbyterian Church of Cameroon. She became a member of this SHDG as a Guardian of one of the Internally displaced children identified and being assisted by LINK-UP. She finally accepted the role of the Group President and is putting to use, her educational and other vast life experiences to nurture the group and the children in her care.
In her own words. Her perception of the group.