Improving the Livelihoods of Baka Indigenous Women in East Cameroon Through Agriculture

About this Project

With this World Connect grant, indigenous women from the Missoume village will be trained in the cultivation of vegetables and the planting of fruit trees with organic manure. The community organization will create a community farm on a piece of land that has been provided by the chief of this community. They will engage community women in a process of nursing, transplanting, and growing vegetables such as huckleberry; eggplant all on the same ridges. This garden will then be interspersed with improved seedlings of fruit trees: Guavas, Pears, Sour Salt, lime and Lemon. The vegetable cultivated on this garden will be evenly distributed to families to be consumed or sold by participants. To facilitate the cultivation of this farm and future farming activities in this community, the organization will create a farm tool library made up of hoes and cutlasses. At the end of a training phase, they will share out improved seedlings to those who have benefited from the training to help them establish similar farms individually. This project will initially benefit 30 very low income indigenous Baka Pygmy women who greatly depend on their husbands who are mostly small scale hunters and so have no stable financial security.