US Charity Trees for the Future Cameroon Program has held a meeting to evaluate their performance for 2013 and also to plan for the year 2014. The meeting took place on November 26, 2013 at the Program’s Office in Buea, SW Cameroon and was chaired by the Country Coordinator, Louis Nkembi. Top on the agenda was the review of 2013 activities and assessing the 2014 plan of action.
A brief review of 2013 activities from January to November was presented by the Program Assistant, Neba Kingsley with much emphasis on number of trees planted so far and a review of some of the challenges faced. He revealed during the meeting that over 1500 Cameroonians in four regions notably Northwest, Southwest, West and Littoral regions are benefiting from Trees for the Future Cameroon activities. Mr. Neba explained that in line with the Program’s objectives for 2013, a 75% success rate has been achieved this far and given that some farmers are still in the process of transplanting, the targeted 150,000 trees per division could be achieved before the end of the year. Strategies to ensure the remaining 25% of work is met before the close of the year were also discussed. The Program Coordinator also announced that in 2014 the Trees for the Future Program in Cameroon would introduce the Forest Garden Approach. He explained that the Forest garden approach would be more business focus to enable the farmer to start reaping economic benefits as soon as possible. He proceeded to explain that it was a three phase project involving soil health improvement, introducing commercial trees and linking the private sector to the Farmers. With this approach in mind, the team resolved that they were going to work with Farmers Unions to ease accountability, monitoring and evaluation.
It was also revealed that in 2014, more emphasis would be laid on protection of watersheds notably Mount Cameroon, Mount Bamboutous and Mount Oku.
By Limbi Blessing Tata
