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Friday, April 22, 2016

chicken project





RUDEC Cameroon has women and children at heart and looks at livelihood activities that would continue to empower them for a better living and health of their children. In our Kom culture "one man's child is only on the stomach" join us and let better the life of women through diversify projects..

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Bee-sy Times

 We are Jonas and Lynn, two German-American volunteers currently working for RUDEC. When Joshua told us about the Beekeeping Project, we were fascinated and enthusiastic to push the project forward as much as possible in our 6-week stay in Belo.
The first thing we wanted to do was visit the RUDEC bee farm. Before we could do that, however, we had to build two more beehives that we could take and install on the farm. This process was already really exciting for us as it was our very first time seeing how beehives are made.
Jonas baiting a hive
Lynn baiting 
We were then ready to visit the bee farm. After a 45 minute bumpy motorcycle ride and a walk through the field, we finally arrived. We were amazed how large RUDEC’s piece of land is – and our excitement grew when we saw the 50 beehives that were already scattered on the land. Now came our favorite part, Joshua showed us how the beehives are installed.

Joshua Biating
We then got to “bate” the hives ourselves – the process of waxing the beehives to attract bees to naturally colonize them.
After a long, exhausting day, we drove back home happy and content.

The following week, we got to work. We were motivated to get as many of our family and friends at home to donate a beehive. After making a financial overview of the project, we made an informational flyer about the project as a whole as well as donation options.

We then went on Facebook and spread the word – with success: in the course of 1,5 weeks, over 12 beehives were donated!
In the meantime, we critically noticed how the delicious pure RUDEC honey stood unnoticed in opaque plastic containers without any label whatsoever. Lynn designed an advertisement poster to hang up on the shelves next to the honey. We then both designed new honey labels. Together with Joshua, we drove to Bamenda on the search for better honey containers. After a long search, we finally found what we were looking for and headed home with a huge bag full of containers.
RUDEC Homemade honey
We were very proud of the final outcome.
When we received all the money from the beehive donations, we got to work. After buying all the materials and assembling them, we custom inscribed each of the hives (a new feature we had thought of).
Sadly, we were not able to carry all of the 16 beehives at once to the bee farm, but we started off with two and installed them on the farm.
Donated hives with  personal inscriptions
In our last week in Belo we plan on installing the rest of the donated hives.
Follow this blog as well as ask people to support RUDEC in this project.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

RUDEC Cameroon Beekeeping Film Final





We are struggling hard to find our own means to sustainability at RUDEC and suggest that you share this video of our bee farm project

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Lynn and Jonas Testimonial for RUDEC Cameroon

 On January 20th 2016, we, Lynn and Jonas, two German-Americans living in Berlin, travelled to Cameroon. We were had just finished high school and decided to volunteer for three months in an
African country during our gap year before starting university. We wanted to see different parts of Cameroon as well as gain experience from different NGOs, which is why decided to spend half the time in Buea (South-West Region) with an organization and the other six weeks volunteering with RUDEC in Belo.
Upon arriving in Belo, we immediately fell in love with the small rural town. The climate was nice and the hilly landscape was beautiful. We arrived not really knowing what project we were going to work on, yet quickly focused on the beekeeping project: We traveled to the farm three times (45 minute ride) and installed more than 20 beehives, many of which were funded through a fundraising campaign we set into motion.
We greatly enjoyed working with RUDEC because of its close ties to the community and extremely proactive approach: If you think of an initiative that could help the community, nothing is stopping you from starting to realize it, with RUDEC’s help, the next day.
Nonetheless, volunteering in Cameroon, with RUDEC is not for everyone. We think you will love volunteering with RUDEC if you 1) get along well with others in ambigious, real-life situations despite miscommunications and unforeseen challenges and 2) work independently and are intrinsically motivated to make a change. RUDEC will support you, but no one will hold your hand or tell you what to do.
At the writing of this testimonial, international press coverage of Cameroon is nearly exclusively negative and focused on terrorist attacks in Central and Western Africa. These warnings are valid; however they apply only to the northern regions of Cameroon (counterintuitively, the North-West isn’t anywhere near northern Cameroon). Unlike all the western countries we have visited, the Cameroonian military operates many checkpoints within its own territory. If you stay in the North-West, South-West, Central, Littoral or Western regions, it is just about as safe as living in Istanbul, Turkey even though there is fighting in ‘nearby’ Syria. We felt safe at all times – everyone we met, including the military personnel at checkpoints were helpful and welcoming. Nevertheless, you should still keep an eye on any developments before your trip and act with reasonable caution while you are here.
We hope that describing our experiences has helped you come to a decision about whether you want to volunteer with RUDEC or not. Of course, we hope you decide to go to Belo – We would come back any day!