The European Union Delegation through the YOUTH UPRAISED NETWORK FOR GROWTH AND PEACE IN CAMEROON project which is implemented by Local Youth Corner Cameroon with support from Search for Common Ground has trained over 50 youth-led organisations across the 10 regions of Cameroon.

Photo Description: Young People in the Littoral Region during Operational Capacity Building. 

It is no longer a secret that one of the biggest challenges faced by young people in civil society organisations is their lack of operational capacity. Though young people are very passionate about bringing change it has been increasingly seen that their inability to properly run their organisation and manage their project has affected their ability to mobilise resources and amplify their impact.

Unfortunately as a result of lack of operational capacity, most youth-led organisations  are marginalise  and are hardly given resources and the opportunity to participate.

One of the youth participants noted that ; “How can our organisation really champion peace when our project proposals always get rejected because we do not have an audit financial statement or the necessary human resource or procedure manuals to convince a donor to finance us.”  A 2019 study noted that over 60% of youth-led peace building CSO organisation operate under 300 USD per annum; so how do we expect young people with no ability to raise and manage resources to lead YPS in Cameroon?

Photo Description: Participants in the South Region sharing lessons learned 

This EU funded project focused on identifying 10 youth-led organisations per region and providing training on their  key operational needs which were identified. For a period of three days these 10 young people from each region received training on how to organise their associations, how to design projects, budget writing, monitoring and evaluation as well as how to carry out financial and narrative reports .

These young people were trained on how  to manage their day-to-day functioning, manage the resources they mobilise, effectively deliver on their project and programmes as well as develop/use policies and procedures to ensure compliant management. Indeed research has proven that an improvement in the operational capacity of an organization would amplify the impact of the  organisation.   Organisations with more operational capacity will have more impact in the society.

Across the 10 region, these trainings ended with participants expressing their gratitude for such a strategic training. Many of them admitted that the training has renewed their hope and will make their organisations better and more impactful.