Women’s Taskforce, SNWOT Fostering Social Cohesion Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

Buea, Cameroon- The Southwest, Northwest Women’s Taskforce, SNWOT has embarked on a project to foster social cohesion in five of Cameroon’s ten regions amidst COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

The three-fold mission project titled “fostering social cohesion amidst COVID-19 in Cameroon” is being implemented in the Northwest, Southwest, West, Littoral, and Centre Regions.

SNWOT says their response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the country is in line with her humanitarian commitment to ensuring decent, healthy, and adequate living standards for all humans.

SNWOT is sensitising the masses, providing psycho-social support and championing advocacy on the need for social cohesion within vulnerable groups like the internally displaced, physically challenged persons and grassroots communities.

The women have since July 21 been in the West, Littoral, and Centre Regions carrying out a door-to-door sensitisation on COVID-19. Daily, no fewer than 250 of those displaced by the conflict in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest Regions have been reached with messages and materials aimed at stifling the spread of the novel coronavirus.

In the 13 divisions of the conflict-hit Northwest and Southwest Regions, SNWOT has gone beyond sensitising the masses on COVID-19 and providing them with protective materials. They went ahead to identify and train some 130 women leaders to serve as community advocates to push back COVID-19 and build community resilience.

Within the context of fostering social cohesion amidst COVID-19 in Cameroon project, 20 women have also received training on Psycho-social First Aid provision to victims of trauma and/or violence in armed conflict.

When the project ends this Friday, July 31, 2020, SNWOT hopes that they would have made yet another vital input in responding to COVID-19 as well as its effects on the populations of the Northwest and Southwest Regions who have been trapped in a conflict pitting state forces and non-state armed groups. With thousands of people killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as a result of the unrest, pundits say SNWOT’s project to foster social cohesion amidst a health threat like COVID-19 comes as a huge relief to the suffering masses.

The Women’s Taskforce had earlier on urged parties to the conflict in the Anglophone regions to observe a mutually respected ceasefire through a negotiated settlement.