By Nchendzengang Tatah

The Cameroon Cultural and Development Assembly, CAMCUDA, has begun a weeklong, out-of-classroom ninth annual workshop to equip students with valuable life skills. The capacity-building workshops, targeting some 1500 learners across Fako to be drawn from secondary and tertiary education institutions, run from October 26 to 31 at the ENEO Training Centre, Ombe.

The workshop is expected to gather 300 learners daily from partner institutions and cover civil status registration, self-employment and job creation, land registration procedures, peacebuilding, and fund sourcing, among other topical issues of youth concern. At the official opening on October 27, the First Assistant Senior Divisional Officer for Fako, Awa Dean Chi, hailed the annual workshop’s success over the last nine years.

For the promoter and CAMCUDA national coordinator, Chief Ndiko Fonderson Henry, the project’s almost a decade of success in the workshop couldn’t be named without its challenges. Top amongst these was resource mobilisation.He outlined that the workshop wasn’t yet fully funded by external support, necessitating a plea in that regard to establishments to foster CAMCUDA’s ambitions of youth building and sustainable development.

For almost a decade, CAMCUDA (first referred to as MEVCUDA) workshops have trained thousands and impacted many more.

It has become an annual rendezvous for young learners to sharpen their intuition and build capacity, accompanied by gifts from sponsors, as well as leisure activities.