30 YOUTH LEADERS FROM THE NW AND SW REGIONS DRILLED ON HOW TO COUNTER HATESPEECH AND CONFLICT IN CRISIS ZONES .

NGALA Desmond NGALA
Country Project manager of Association civic watch 

Q

What is the objective of this program?

The objective of this come together is first and foremost to get not only young people, give them the skills, knowledge and know how but actually to do a mixture of thier different experiences together, we are going to be looking at giving them not only skills but giving them small grants to run activities and projects within their different localities and communities 

We are pushing for a youth inclusive kind of advocacy in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon, but also we are looking on getting more and more policy markers on board to work for peace in these regions, I'm happy that we've seen a lot and lot people respond to the invitation and I'm also happy that as the days go by we would be seeing the engagement that we started this morning 

We are looking at building safety using the social media, but also creating community resilience between different communities and it would be great for us ,for me as well to see that young people most especially those who are experience, those who are inexperience,those who have something to say in thier communities and actively contribute to peace and stability within  the communities 

Peace weavers on training 

Q

We are seeing youths,men and women from the North West and South West regions, can you tell us the criteria for the selection?

The criteria for the selection was very very not very simple, we were looking at youth leaders who've already actively started off an action in thier community, we were looking at people who are taking peace irrespective, who ,where they are and who is doing what.

We were looking at women we were looking at men ,we were looking for people found within associations and organizations, so yes we were looking at a multiplicity of actions and systems to be able to select those who will come for this program,.

We are also looking at those that when they come for this program, they will go back to thier various communities, you must be based within a community to be recruited and we are not just picking people from the major towns  and cities but we are picking people from all the Divisions ,either they are from the divisional headquarters or even from a village within that particular division 

Q 

It appears that they have  to disseminate this training when they go back ,so what are some of the major outcome you expect from the communities 

We don't believe that trainings should only happen, but they should happen and people should disseminate them,give back to the community what they've actually learned or what they are learning on daily basis. That is why we believe when they come here and finish this training they need to go back and design programs, they are going to be identifying their own problems in thier communities, they are going to be asking us does this fall within the mandate of the project and we are going to be working with them to support them both logistically and financially to some extent to execute this,they will do the training for two months and after two months they will be ripe to go back to their communities and do restitution on varied topics not only question of hate,misinformation, peace building, social cohesion and living together which we think is very vital at this point in the nation's life

Q

What is the significance of the theme?

I will tell you that we will start not only with the theme but the way the project has been codenamed Peace weavers, we are calling them peace weavers because we believe that they are going to be intermediaries for for peace ,just like we have first responders and people who run ambulances give first aid to people, we're considering that this will be a peace first aid group that will be able to give a first aid to people in the communities before even  experts can come in and resolve and by that they will actually be solving community's problems, so the program design all through around this and to us, we believe and we know that is very very possible and in the coming days certainly, hopefully I will see results.

By Jude KENJI