Steemit Engagement Challenge Season2 #week1 | Markdown Style Contest: Show an Institution or Charity Place in Your City - Good Shepherd Home

Hello to all on the Steem for BetterLife community. It’s a privilege for me to participate in this contest for season 2. I am pleased to share my experience with one of the charity homes in my city which despite challenges due to the crisis in my region, still stands tall. This charity home is called Good Shepherd Home, with over 150 children from age 0-25years old. Presently, it is difficult to visit the orphanage especially if you do not have anything to offer. They equally do not permit visitors to take pictures but before giving us the notice, we had taken some pictures. So, I have to use some of the old images of my experience there to talk about the home.

Location of the Good Shepherd Home.

This charity home is at Abangoh, a community located in the suburbs of the Bamenda city, North West Region of Cameroon. Those taking care of the children are two reverend sisters one of them is a volunteer and the other, is the founder of the home.

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How I came Across this Charity Home

I knew about this charity home when I was working with an NGO. While working with this organization, there were limited funds to run activities for the organization. We developed a strategy to clean orphanages around town since we did not have financial support to offer to them.

The Conditions of the Orphans

We are living in a crisis region for over 5 years now, and this has greatly affected the kids in terms of health, education, feeding, and clothing. I had discussions with the sister who was like the general overseer of the orphanage and equally had discussions with some of the senior orphans.

From eye observations, some of the kids were not happy while some wished to move out of the home. But from what the sister told us, the children are not placed for adoption but can stay in the orphanage as long as you deemed necessary. The reason why there you could see some of them as older as 25years old.

Educating the Kids.

In terms of educating the children, the sister told us the children use to school based on sponsorship from people of goodwill. But since the start of the Anglophone crisis in 2016, most of the kids, especially the younger ones had to stop schooling. Schools around the orphanage where the kids attended were shot down due to the crisis. The orphanage does not have enough resources to operate a school within its premises for the kids. More to that schooling within the orphanage is not advisable because the kids need to interact with other kids. It’s a friendly free space for them to relax and make new friends out of the orphanage.

Health Condition of the kids.

For the adults, from what we saw, they were looking healthy though some of them complained of not feeding well as compared to kids growing up with their parents. There was no clinic around the orphanage that can cater to any emergency at night. The sister told us of a case of a 2-month-old baby who died at night after suffering from a malaria infection. If there was a clinic around or within the orphanage, that child would not have died.

Feeding

We arrived when the little kids were taking their breakfast and what was breakfast🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️. Corn flour was cooked with little sugar and served as breakfast for the kids. Some of the kids were looking malnourished because of a lack of good feeding. The senior orphans told us that they feed on goods offered by people of goodwill which most often is rice. They have to farm to eat. But since the crisis started, they are unable to farm enough to feed everyone because their farms are located in strongholds of separatist fighters.

From my discussions with them, they said, they do not have a professional cook, who cooks for them. One of the adult orphans said, “…Aunty, we cook for ourselves…we care for each other”.

So, the senior orphans aged 16 and above have a farm at Bafut, where they farm food such as maize, cassava, yam, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, birds and pigs, etc.
The whole orphanage had just two reverend sisters to take care of the kids.

Clothing

The dresses for the orphans are donated to the orphanage by people of goodwill. From what the sister told us, she said “…we do not have money to buy good clothes for the kids, so we only depend on free donations from people”.

This means that if people of goodwill donate dresses once a year, some of the kids will practically walk around naked.

Play Ground for the kids.

These kids especially the little ones aged 2-10, do not have a good playground in the orphanage. Sadly, the kids had a small space where the boys can manage to play soccer. To make them happy, we had to play with them a bit because the playground was not good.

Looking at the condition of the kids, just two sisters cannot render good care for this huge number of kids. The orphanage was looking dirty, we had to spend almost 5hours cleaning the children’s sleeping rooms, and the dining where they were eating. They depend heavily on donations and the government does not support them financially.

In conclusion, if there is any orphanage here in Bamenda that needs help, is the good shepherd home. I have been to other orphanages around town but their conditions were far better than Good Shepherd Home. These children did not choose to become orphans and it is not anyone’s wish to become an orphan. Therefore, any help or assistance rendered to them is a way for making them smile and know that someone out there cares about them. I will use this medium to invite @wase1234, @mojuapollonia, @tenguhatanga, and @graciellia to take part in this challenge.