To commemorate the International Widow’s Day which is celebrated globally on the 23rd of June each year, Denis Miki Foundation launched the “Share The Love; Sponsor A Widow’s Health Insurance” Project. There are an estimated 500,000 widows in Cameroon, out of a population of about 20.550.000, accommodating some 250 different ethnic groups. Widows are the most vulnerable and neglected group in our community. In our community, the widows are among the poorest and most marginalized group in the community. There exists a multiplier effect where they cannot afford quality education for their children. Consequently, some of these children drop out of school, have unwanted pregnancies while some resort to joining bad gangs and become arm robbers. Therefore, an effort to economically empower widows is a timely intervention to take them out of poverty and equally preserve the future of their children. Widows and their children, particularly their daughters, who so often suffer the most discrimination and violence, direct and indirect, from state and non-state actors, and this discrimination, resulting in extreme poverty, marginalisation, and exposure to violence, requires visibility so that it can be addressed by governments.
A project to financially and economically empower them is primordial for their well-being. This economic empowerment will facilitate the widows to send their children to school, also be able to sustain the family given that they are now the main bread winner in the absence of their husbands. The project has as goal to economically empower 50 widows in the coastal area in Limbe Cameroon. The key objective is to assist in poverty reduction and to improve the livelihood of the widows who are mostly poorly catered for and live in financial hardship. Our activities will involve community mobilization to identify the widows, sensitize them and register them for Health Insurance in the BEPHA program.
We are focused on empowering women and young girls. We are motivated by the hardship, neglect and male dominance experienced by the women in our community, we are therefore engaged in assisting these women and young girls to train them to become financially independent and economically empowered. We are moved with compassion for the widows who have nobody to defend and fend for them. They usually have their late husband’s property unjustly taken away from them. Thus, such a project will be a source of comfort and hope to them.
We, with several of our partners calls on and invites widows to register and benefit from the project; “Share the Love; Sponsor a Widow’s Health Insurance” at their office situated besides the Chinese Shop Newton, Limbe. The project aims at achieving health insurance support for widows who cannot afford their health care because of poverty and high dependency from children left behind after the death of their partners. In a bit to reduce the poverty suffering levels of widows and develop programs to address their health challenges and encourage actions in achieving full rights for widows and ameliorate their conditions.
Register today at Denis Miki Foundation with the photocopy of your national identity card or birth certificate and one passport size photograph or call the numbers 677985413 or 677422454.
