Ajomuzu Collette Bekaku

Revision as of 06:17, 18 January 2009

Ms. Ajomuzu Collette Bekaku

Ms. Ajomuzu Collette Bekaku is Founder and Executive Director of Cameroon Association for the Protection and Education of the Child (CAPEC). She has extensive experience in social work and human rights. With a Post-Graduate degree from the University of Yaoundé II Soa, she started her non-profit association and targeted orphans and underprivileged children in Cameroon. Prior to creating CAPEC, she had worked for the British Council Cameroon and was a pioneer member of the InterAction Leadership Programme, a high profile transformation leadership program in sub-Sahara Africa, sponsored by the British Council, LEAD International and delivered by UK and Pan African experts.

Ms. Ajomuzu’s passion for childcare is the sole motivation behind her very active work in CAPEC. A careful observer of the society, she observed with sympathy how children were increasingly becoming victims of human rights violations like child abuse, female genital mutilation, breast ironing, child labour, child trafficking and poor access to healthcare, education, food, clothing and educative entertainment, especially in the rural areas. She created CAPEC in 2002 with the vision of promoting the welfare of children so that they could grasp opportunities to attain their full potentials in societies where their rights and dignity are respected.

CAPEC set out to achieve the following objectives:

• To make known the rights of the child and protect them through education as prescribed by UNICEF and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child;
• To assist the needy child irrespective of his/her tribe, origin, sex, religion, in the domain of social welfare;
• To prevent child labour and eliminate the sexual exploitation of children;
• To assist children confined in prisons and rehabilitation institutions;
• To monitor different forms of human rights abuse against the child

CAPEC has worked with and for children and youths in more than thirty (30) villages in Cameroon, to identify the needs and meet the aspirations of the rural youth and the underprivileged. Visits have been made to community centers, social centers, health centers and hospitals to assist the needy child.

CAPEC has organised symposiums, workshops and education campaigns via the media (radio, television, newspaper) and orally in rural areas where Chiefs and Elites were invited to promote the welfare of the child and combat juvenile delinquency. CAPEC has devised campaigns, in collaboration with other associations to protect the rights of children.

CAPEC has set up different programmes to educate children as well as provide assistance to child prisoners, orphans, street children and child workers.