Daryl conducts an interview in the community

A global partnership between Plan Cameroon and Nokia is giving Cameroonian youths access to ICT (information and communication technologies) to identify development priorities and advocate for change at community and national level.

The main component of the ‘Youth Empowerment Through Arts and Media’ (YETAM) project, funded in partnership with Nokia, is arts and media training with youths in secondary schools (ages 12-21).

Youths are organised into groups and then create their own art, theatre sketches, songs, poetry, photos, and videos on children’s rights topics, such as birth registration and the right to education, and problems children face in their communities, such as early marriage and child labour. They use these to bring about change in their own lives and the lives of others.

Getting connected

“For our project, each group identifies a theme and goes round the village to gather enough information to produce the video or photograph depicting the theme” says Daryl, a 12 year old boy enrolled in the project.

Shortly after the launch of the project, the young people made a film about the poor access to drinking water in Mva’a. After rallying materials, the community then mobilised to build a new water point.

“With the film done by the youths, we have safe drinking water today,” said Ngono, a village resident.

During the launch ceremony in July 2009, Linda Raftree, YETAM coordinator for Plan in West Africa said, “There are new media and technologies that are coming out and Africa has really started to get connected. The methodology that we use in the project is exposing children to new technologies and we want to get children’s voices heard and let them bring out the positive things happening in their communities”.

Breaking down barriers

To mark the first 3 months of training, children and youths of Mva’a community, with the help of local NGO Irondel, organised a ceremony where they showcased films, poems, theatre sketches and artwork to a cross section of government representatives, other local NGOs and parents.

“This has helped to break down the barrier of dialogue between parents, authorities and us. Other youths have even discovered their hidden potential [in arts and media], and we are being included in community development processes” says Daryl.

Read about what we do in Cameroon, or take a look at Plan YETAM's YouTube channel