After a
one month intense preparation, we finally took a bus
for Kribi on the 26th of August 2009 from
9:25 am Cameroon time.
Our
team
Asama abel Excel
(President of i-Vission International and Net²
organizer for Douala)
Daniel MOUNDZEGO
(President of ARSF and member of the Douala Net²)
Liman Judas
(Camera man)
Anagho Emmanuel
(Member)
Chantal Nomo.
(member of ARSF)
Anja
Federick
(Tresurer of ARSF)
Olivier Njiokeng
( Member of the Douala Net² Meetup)
The
journey was fantastic with light rains experienced
in the morning.
After a
two hours thirty minutes drive from Douala we
arrived at kribi.
The
Kribi net² Organizer, Celestin lobe gave us a
hectic welcome. The boys were lodged in a mini hotel
called FANTA, while the lonely girl
in
our group from Douala spent the three nights with
one family.
During the day 1
of our visit, we met with the City Council’s
Secretary General, the Mayor of the kribi I
council, and the Regional Delegate
of
tourism with whom we had a working session each.
The
mission of Net² was clearly explained to the various
actors who were amazed at such a wonderful vision.
On behalf of their various
institutions, they all promised to do everything
necessary to foster development in their local
communities in partnership with the local Net²
group,
and
gave us the go ahead to meet the people and visit
the various sites according to our program.
Day
2-3
of our schedule was basically a time to move around
town and visit the various sites of attraction. We
visited the NGONYE beach at the
entrance
of the town a little forest, a pig farm, an
orphanage (Mission de la paix), and Hotel Kribi
Plaza, just a stone throw from the beach.. While
at the
beach, we met citizens individually to talk about
our mission to Kribi and took the opportunity to
invite them for the seminar programmed for 6pm.
We also
went swimming though most of my friends were afraid
to approach the sea, for that was the first time
they ever saw the sea!
Day two
ended with an exposé titled: A successful
community based project. Daniel MOUNDZEGO,
President of ARSF explained to
the
people the importance of a community driven project
and what it takes to succeed.
He went
on encouraging the people to love one another and
accept to listen to others for Meetup is all about
bringing talents together for a common
goal.
Day
three was programmed for the last two exposés, one
on how to develop a project and the other on the
functioning of Netsquared and Meetup.
Olivier
Njiokeng, presented a seven steps model to
grant writing, followed by the mission, objectives
and activities of Netsquared presented by
Excel
ASAMA.
The
Netsquared annual conference drew the attention of
many, who express doubts in the effectiveness of
such a program since it is difficult to
get
VISA to the USA.
When
they were informed that someone (Valery Colong) from
Cameroon was present in the N2Y4 conference and is
back with us, they were all
assured.
The
reason for this doubt was the fact that their
projects could be voted, but might end up not
defended in the USA because of VISA problems.
The
attendance
We had
more than 80 participants for the two days we
organized the seminars.
Met
with at least 200 people face to face, talking about
Netsquared at different venues of the town, making a
total of 280 and more
25
persons registered manually to Netsquared since we
could not have access to the net.
We had
to come back to Douala to register them. The
registration process will continue through this week
as we receive their pictures…
It is
surprising that just two persons had an email
address at that moment.
These
guys need a lot of motivation from us to go ahead.
Considering the large amount of work we have, the
speed to accomplish this task will
be
slowed down a bit.
