Beginning this week we're excited to host a group of student interns from St. Austin International University's Agriculture Departure for the month of June. The students will spend two days each week with us to gain practical skills in a range of agricultural activities. We held a welcome and induction session with our Director and staff at the Njinikijem Centre, and students and BERUDA staff alike are looking forward to learning and sharing with each other.

Over the last quarter, the BERUDA Mobile Eye Clinic has seen, diagnosed and treated over 120 individuals from remote communities, across the North West Region. These are mostly older women and widows who benefit from having health services visit them in their own homes, but who don't normally receive even basic health services due to their remote locations.

BERUDA is fortunate to have on staff its own trained eye specialist, Mr. Nkain Isaac, who provides the eye screenings, corrective lenses, and a range of treatments for these patients. There are, unfortunately, many patients who also require eye surgeries that are beyond our current capabilities, and available resources, but despite this, we do the best we can to offer essential screenings and treatments in the hope of preventing further vision loss.

"The work of our Mobile Eye Clinic is especially vital in these challenging times, as many of our patients face barriers such as limited access to healthcare, transportation challenges, and the ongoing socio-political unrest. We are extremely grateful for the donations that enable this service to role out this vital work, and we see the extraordinary difference saving and restoring sight makes to the capabilities and self resilience of the people of the North West Region everyday. "
- Director of BERUDA, Ngwainmbi Simon.

This year, we plan to extend our outreach to Mentang, Anyajua, Wum, and Njinikom, as part of our ongoing mission to promote healthy vision and improve the quality of life for rural populations.

“Yesterday, I was in the field in Belo with the PROMIC Coordinator from BERUDA to support four women’s groups through our ongoing microcredit initiative. PROMIC, which stands for Promoting Micro Enterprises, is a BERUDA project sponsored by Swisshand, aimed at empowering economically disadvantaged local women.

Through this program, women receive business training in entrepreneurship, followed by access to micro loans to either launch or boost their small businesses. We also provide continuous follow-up to ensure they apply best practices for business growth and sustainability.

Last month we focused on equipping participants with the necessary skills through training. This month, we are moving into the loan disbursement phase to help them put those skills into action and grow their businesses.

What has been great is that we've been able to address some of the problems the women were encountering in paying back loans and we've made some changes such as longer loan terms and scheduling post-harvest re-payments dates. This along with the refresher training on the terms and conditions of the loans has given the women a much more positive outlook on the program and they're energized about their businesses."

- Blessing Shelle is the assistant to the Director of BERUDA.

At the Agricultural Centre in Njinikijem, our commitment to organic agriculture continues to grow. Recently, we completed the replanting of cucumbers, we also planted turmeric, ginger, and watermelon as part of our crop rotation strategy. Monthly vegetable harvesting is ongoing, and we began harvesting green beans yesterday.

These efforts are part of our mission to promote sustainable, organic farming practices that protect both the environment and community health. We are preparing to launch training sessions for local community members, focusing on organic techniques and land preservation.

Looking ahead, we also plan to welcome students from across the region for hands-on training in agriculture and micro-enterprise development—offering practical skills and knowledge to support future agri-preneurs.

Warm greetings from the Belo Rural Development Association (BERUDA)! As we look back on the first quarter of 2025, we’re excited to share the progress we’ve made in the first few months of the year in empowering vulnerable communities. It’s been a busy and meaningful time, full of programs that are making a real difference in communities across the Boyo Division and beyond.
Thanks to the generous support of our donors, volunteers, and partners, BERUDA has been able to touch the lives of countless individuals, particularly children, women, and marginalized communities.
Your support makes all of this possible. Thank you for helping us build stronger, healthier communities where people can live with dignity, independence, and hope.
We welcome and encourage you to please read on to learn more about the work we are passionate about.

The first quarter of 2025 has been a rewarding period for BERUDA’s apiculture efforts. In January, we were honored to receive a prestigious award from the Cameroon Climate Journalism Network (CCJN) in recognition of our long-standing commitment to sustainable beekeeping practices. Our Director, Ngwainmbi Chia Simon, proudly received the award on behalf of the organization—an inspiring milestone that reflects decades of grassroots impact and innovation.

As we move forward, BERUDA is preparing to host regional training sessions with beekeepers across the North West Region. These sessions will focus on modern techniques, hive management, and sustainable practices, equipping local farmers with the skills to improve productivity and resilience in the face of climate and socio-political challenges. Informal trainings in areas like Mbueni, Mbingo, Wum, and Bamenda have empowered farmers with practical skills, boosting household income and food security.

This quarter, we celebrated the graduation of 10 young people from vocational programs in tailoring, ICT, graphic design, hairdressing, and more—giving them valuable skills for a brighter future. Others are excelling in secondary school and university, propelled by their own hard work and the continued sponsorship and guidance of many.
We continued our home and school visits over this period to provide counselling, educational support, and basic needs—especially for children living in remote or high-risk areas.
This is a programme that can always benefit from sponsors for the children so please be in touch if you'd like to contribute to this programme.

As we continue with weekly education sessions with our widows groups in the local areas, we have focused on topics such as maintaining good health through healthy eating habits and through the use of natural medicines that are abundantly available in the local environment. The meetings also provide a support forum where the widows come together to encourage one another as they navigate their common challenges.
Additionally, the widows are engaged in a “Tontine” arrangement where they save small amounts of money throughout the year, which they can later collect to purchase essential items like salt and cooking oil.
These weekly sessions not only focus on physical health but also provide mental health support, helping the widows cope with the trauma and emotional challenges they face due to the socio-political crisis. These education sessions teach coping strategies, stress management, and provide a supportive environment where the widows can share their experiences and feel empowered.

We are excited to announce the launch of BERUDA’s first Mental Health Project, a timely and impactful initiative aimed at building capacity in clinical psychology and counselling across Cameroon. This project is made possible through our valued partnership with Global Support Link (GSL) and Ana Pinto, a highly respected psychology lecturer and supervisor at Cambridge University and director of the Cambridge eLearning Institute.
Ana brings a wealth of experience, having contributed to similar mental health initiatives in India and The Gambia. Ana will lead two exclusive “Train the Trainer” online courses: one for medical professionals, nurses, and academics, and the second for community leaders and influencers. Each course will host 20 participants, who will receive certification upon completion. These trainees will later share their knowledge within their communities, creating a ripple effect of mental health awareness and support.
The executive director, Ngwainmbi Chia Simon and Blessing Shelle, who is currently coordinating the project, has already met with Ana and John of GSL via Zoom. Together, they are actively preparing for the first round of training. The selection process is underway, and candidates will be chosen based on a questionnaire and a written commitment to complete the course.
We are grateful to GSL and Ana for their commitment and look forward to the positive impact this project will bring.

As we look toward 2025, our resolve remains strong. With your continued support, we are confident in our ability to expand our outreach, strengthen our agricultural and empowerment programs, and continue creating opportunities for women, children, and marginalized communities to thrive.
Thank you for standing with us. You are an essential part of the BERUDA family, and together, we are transforming lives and building a more sustainable and just future

Fields of huckleberry vegetables have been planted at BERUDA in Njinikijem. The harvest and sale of these green vegetables will help support the basic needs of the children in our children's programme. These fields provide employment for three local people who will be planting, harvesting and selling the produce.
Check out these photos of our newly planted vegetables from April 2022.
Grow big little plants!

Here at BERUDA we are optimistically looking towards 2022 for peace, prosperity and opportunities to grow. 

Friends, what are you looking forward to in 2022? We'd love you to share your hopes with us, as we share some of our thoughts and reflections from 2021 and into 2022.

What we're excited about?
- the potential of the children in our Sponsor A Child Project :-). With 97% of the children achieving great grades in 2021, we're excited about the opportunities that education can bring.
- those brightly coloured little vegetables called cayenne peppers! For their huge potential in bringing community benefits - great health and income!

We're pleased to report that 2021 has been a hive of activity (pun intended) at BERUDA, and a wide range of our activities have been strengthened or have kicked off again after a period of absence. It gives us great pleasure to bring some of our highlights to you in this latest news.

Back in Business!

Two of our offices reopened in January this year. The Njinikom and Fundong offices are open and functioning normally with medicinal plants, honey, beeswax and harvesting equipment displayed on the counter, along with the friendly faces of our office staff. We're now looking forward to getting our Njinikejem-Belo office open in the near future. We intend to refill the fishpond after the fish were stolen during the crisis, recommence with the pig farm, poultry and the plantain farm as well. This will all commence as we raise further funds and as the security situation keeps getting better. But we're off to a great start.

​Honey sales and beekeeping

The year started off well with many of our beekeepers looking forward to harvesting honey from March onwards. BERUDA’S bee farm was no exception as luckily we still had a good number of colonised hives that have not suffered the effects of the crisis. We have been able to extract honey from our bee farm which sell in retail sized quantities in our branch offices, and our honey displays are looking great.
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Sales in general have been up and down due to the town of Bamenda facing numerous lockdowns due to COVID, which sometimes make it difficult for our honey supplies to get to the office on time, leading to out of stock situations. Unfortunately two different training sessions on beekeeping were unable to happen during the harvesting period of March through June due to roadblocks caused by the local crisis. However many bee farmers and interested farmers keep streaming in to our offices for specialist advice and we are planning to organize a mega training on bee keeping in the months ahead.

Healthy eyes

BERUDA has re-launched its mobile eye clinic for free eye consultations in Fundong, Njinikom and Belo. This is carried out by our specialist eye care nurse Isaac, who ran the clinics pre-crisis. We've seen a great turnout for the services during our sensitization campaign and it provides a much needed service.

​Sponsor a Child Project

The year started off well in the Sponsor a Child Project (SACP) with most children returning to schools and to their apprenticeship posts. We were able to cover the school fees of all our children enrolled in school and provide the resources they need to succeed. Two of the girls in the program wrote their H.N.D (Higher National Diploma) in June, each of them defending their projects and emerging with an “EXCELLENT” grade which actually made us proud.

May was a great month due to re-establishing contact with three children previously from the programme who we had not had word of for more than three years due to their location in a hard to reach area in a separatist stronghold.

The academic year is gradually getting to an end and we look forward to enrolling more children in schools and for apprenticeship.

​Cayenne pepper and Chicken breeding projects

Since late 2020 we have been running a twin project in Fundeng (Belo sub-division) cultivating Cayenne Pepper and raising chickens in an enclosed area. The project is aimed at creating employment for community youths, teaching them skills and providing productive activity designed to reduce the risk of youth joining the violence in the area.

The pepper is sown, harvested, processed and sold in the community and beyond, self generating the funds needed to ensure it becomes a sustainable social enterprise. The first few months of 2021 saw the project entering its second phase: transplanting the pepper into the ridges, the completion of the fence for the chickens, hatcheries and local driers. Some of the pepper planted for experimentation purpose was harvested and processed.

The blessing of being able to reach our communities!

BERUDA was blessed these past few months with a huge donation from Miva to purchase a 4x4 Pickup truck to ease movement around the communities to render services to mankind, for which we are grateful and have already commenced these services. A special appreciation to Miva for this support.

2020 has been a tough year for the world, but the communities BERUDA works with have dealt with the turmoil on top of a tough 3 years of local conflict, closed schools and displacement. However, we're optimistic about the future and as we make our way into 2021 we wanted to update you on some of the initiatives underway that will create a 2021 we can look back at as the catalyst for change.

In 2020, BERUDA created a number of initiatives designed to combat issues of poverty, youth disenfranchisement and health issues of local communities. Reaching out to donors, BERUDA has successfully received funding for projects that will bear fruit in 2021.

The Cayenne Pepper Project - an economic activity aimed at youth

Type Cayenne Pepper into google and it will predict the two words 'health benefits' - so well-known are its nutritional properties. Many people consider cayenne pepper to be the king of medicinal herbs, and BERUDA has decades of experience in training communities in medicinal herbs projects. In 2020 this has seen BERUDA working with 20 local women in the community to provide cayenne pepper seedlings to a soon-to-be constructed processing centre. A centre where a small group of previously unemployed youth are being trained to harvest, process, market and sell the peppers.

As of mid-December the project is well underway and it has proved attractive to the youth BERUDA were hoping to attract - young men who had taken to living in the surrounding bush areas and were vulnerable to recruitment by militia groups. The project is headed up by a young man just like them, which has helped the youth visualise themselves being a part of the project. One of the young men has even taken the initiative to invent a farm tool that will make cultivating the pepper a more efficient process.

BERUDA has realised that if it creates the right projects, they will prove useful as conflict resolution tools that can be replicated wider into other villages, seeking out influential youths involved in the conflict and encouraging them to learn, earn and gain a sense of purpose.

We look forward to updating you on progress from this and other ventures in the New Year.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas wherever you are - may you be blessed with health and peace.

♥ From the team at BERUDA ♥

It has been a while, but we’re sure you'll understand. Unfortunately since our last post in 2018, things have not yet taken a turn for the better. Below we've put together a summary of the news from a recent newsletter put out by BERUDA's Sponsor an Orphan Project.

Life remains very challenging for all citizens of the English speaking North West and South West Regions of Cameroon. The conflict that broke out in November 2016 leading to the rupture and later on to complete close down of the educational sector in the semi-urban and rural areas of Cameroon has steadily degenerated our living conditions. 

As most of you might already know, Belo and later on other towns such as Njinikom and Fundong have been the hotspots of the conflict between the government and non-state armed forces. The irrational gun exchanges, burning of houses and property, human casualties as collateral damage and intentional killings both by the non-state (separatists) and government armed forces displaced 95% of the populations. Belo, home to BERUDA HQ, has now been deserted for almost a year and presently looks like farmland. Before the exodus, staff would have to travel among rotting corpses and were subjected to the terrifying gunshots that continued day and night.

There have been developments that have made life easier for the staff to manage. Shortly before BERUDA left Belo to set up the office in nearby Bamenda City, BERUDA gained a contract with UNICEF to act as Third Party Monitors to the activities they are implementing in the North West Region in their emergency response efforts. UNICEF is implementing projects through other partners like PLAN International Cameroon, SHUMAS, Red Cross and more. UNICEF monitors the activities of all these partners for compliance, efficiency and to provide coaching where needed. Due to the volatile situation, UNICEF staff are not able to conduct the monitoring and BERUDA as one of the most deeply rooted and influential grassroots organizations in the North West has taken over the work on the ground. Staff travel into the field, collect sampling data and electronically submit the data via an app on mobile phones called “KOBO collect,” which can be extracted by the Data Manager, analysed and then reported to UNICEF. The contract is due to end shortly, but there are prospects that it shall be renewed for 3 more months. 

Since the conflict began most of our Orphans from BERUDA’s Sponsor an Orphan Project stopped attending school and over two long years occasionally attempted to resume studies but their efforts were futile. The separatists used education as the main tool in the fight against the government of Cameroon and declared zero operation of schools in the Regions. So they kept brutally attacking and occasionally knifed students who attempted to go school, kidnapping teachers and burning schools. In early 2018, the educational system completely collapsed in 5 out of 7 Divisions of the North West region and in all of the South West. 

The good news is that we have successfully located all the orphans in the program. We know their whereabouts and are able to follow up on their progress. We maintained our activities locating and visiting orphans in Bamenda, and occasionally in Belo incurring much trekking due to road blocks, monthly hospital visits and refill of ARVs for the HIV+ children and following up on emergency health issues. We took care of household needs and food for some of those children who moved to Bamenda. We intend to keep on assisting the orphans in the best way we can in these trying times of the conflict. It is important to know that after this conflict, the orphans will have double the needs like before; some may need serious psychological support, making of civil documents lost during the time of displacement, extra support in education to catch up on the lost time, etc.

Since December 2018, BERUDA had planned a general distribution of food and non-food Items (in addition to the individual supplies given out) but constant road blocks in the area by the separatist fighters and frequent gun fighting presented a very insecure and risky environment for that activity. The supplies were stored until February 2019 when we journeyed to Belo to supply all the families still living within Boyo Division. Supplies included cooking oil, salt, rice, groundnuts, soy beans, maggi, onions, and other non-food items such as laundry soaps, sanitary pads for teenage girls, body lotions and more.

And so life carries on, with hope for a brighter future in coming days. Thank you immensely for your steadfast support to BERUDA and their service to humanity.

Until next time, take care.