Asongah Leghung Emeh Boh Mwuah

“Asongah Leghung Emeh Boh Mwuah” Takes Off On Lebialem Community Radio
By Cameroon Link,
Email: camlink99@gmail.com

“Asongah Leghung Emeh Boh Mwuah” has taken off on Lebialem Community Radio in Menji following a week-long story design workshop organized by the COL Cameroon Link Health Development NGO Partnership and a Malawi Radio Story Design team. The 12-month long project was officially launched by the Deputy Senior Divisional Officer, Moni Innocent Nanje, in the presence of some 26 well selected participants from various sectors of the Lebialem community. The Malawian trainers were Charles Simbi and Gladson Makowa, both from the Story Design Workshop Organisation based in Lilongwe. Before leaving Cameroon, four programmes were realized on different issues related to the theme of the Commonwealth of Learning programme, “Mother and Child Health Care”.
Addressing the participants during the official opening of the workshop, Deputy SDO for Lebialem, Moni Innocent Nanje, said , It is a great honour to the Lebialem people that the administrative jurisdiction was chosen for housing the project that started with a story design workshop and that the launching of the first initiative of the Community of Learning in Cameroon started in enclave Lebialem with no motorable roads. He expressed the thanks and gratitude of the administration and the people of Lebialem to Cameroon Link Health Development NGO for negotiating the programme and the Commonwealth of Learning Agency coordinated from Vancouver, Canada for accepting to take the initiative to the very enclave area of the south west region of Cameroon.
Innocent Nanje observed, that Canada and Cameroon have a lot of similarities and belong to the Commonwealth of Nations family and that the focus on health, and specifically on “Maternal and Child Health Care” is very much in line with the policy of community health promotion by the Cameroon government.
The SDO thanked the Commonwealth of Learning for supporting Cameroon through Cameroon Link and for bringing the experts of Malawi Radio Story Design Workshop to Cameroon and particularly to Lebialem to facilitate the Radio Programmes Story Design Training for enriching the programmes schedule of Lebialem Community Radio in Menji.
He promised that the story design workshops that have been efficient in the transformation of communities in Malawi will bear better fruits in Cameroon and hoped that similar successes were going to be attained starting from Lebialemin the south west region.
The SDO announce that the people of Lebialem are handling the initiative like an egg and will take it as another challenge for behaviour change communication activities related to mother and child health care matters. Innocent Nanje reminded the participants that the Community of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organization created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education.
Collaboration among different groups is one of the key principles of the Community of Open and Distance Learning (CODL) approach that Cameroon Link and the Story Design Workshop facilitators from Malawi are promoting in Lebialem. The COL’s objectives and how participants work with ODL in the context of community health and local development organizations would be achieved only if all target groups without exception collaborate during the execution phase of the new initiative.
He concluded by saying that the COL model is designed to be flexible and adaptable, centered on a few key principles:
Non-formal education approaches to media, for example, the identification of learning objectives and a learning process,
Collaborative process involving media-Information Communication Technology (ICT), health-development authorities and experts, and community networks,
Participatory design and operation of learning programmes,
Story-based approach to learning content (alongside information from experts)
Blended and multichannel approach to learning that combines media content with face-to-face interactions and other types of learner support using print, mobile phones, etc.
With this, he urged the participants of the Commonwealth of Learning story design workshop to give the trainers and facilitators the necessary collaboration for knowledge to be transferred to them, and that this knowledge should be used in transforming the populations to take up their responsibilities for mother and child health care in Lebialem division of Cameroon.
“Asongah Leghung Emeh Boh Mwuah” was chosen as the title of the mother and child health care programme already in the air at the Lebialem Community Radio, the main beneficiary of the new initiative led by James Achanyi-Fontem of the COL Cameroon Link.Partnership Liaison person.