By Mildred Wung
Catholic School St John’s Ntaghem, Saint Joseph’s Catholic College Mankon and Saint Charles Lwanga Catholic School Up Station located in Bamenda received pedagogic equipment from -Strategic Humanitarian Services” SHUMAS, a none profit organization dedicated to improving welfare of poor peasant communities.
Fifty desks, two tables and two chairs were given to Catholic School St John’s Ntaghem which until the gifts had classrooms void of benches. The offer was appreciated by the School Manager Rev Fr Gabriel Afumbom who said “we remain very greatful to SHUMAS for this donation. With the outbreak of COVID19 and with the suspension and resumption of schools calling on institutions to take all the measures to fight COVID19 we had that great challenge of social distancing given that our enrolment was increasing so we had to approach SHUMAS to help us to see how we can have more benches so we approaches and they readily accepted”
To Saint Joseph Catholic School Mankon which operated without a science laboratory, SHUMAS refurbished a classroom to an equipped laboratory and offered this to the school. Lum Bertila, one of the students expressed enthusiasm to have the opportunity to do practicals. Reverand Father Bonaventure Ndong, College Principal also expressed thesame joy. As if to test the equipment at the laboratory, high school students immediately demonstrated a titration test, a process to show that an acid reacts with a base to form salt and water.
Catholic School Saint Charles Luanga was beneficiary of a newly constructed block of classrooms, toilets and benches where School Manager Reverand Father Edward Siani appreciated the donor for an investment for the future and for acknowledging that ” children are jewels”
As he moved from one school to another for retrocession of the equipment, Mr Stephen Ndzerem,
Director of SHUMAS underlined the essence of educating school children
“the only thing u can give to a child is education. If a child is to be the president of this country and that child does not go to school, the child would not even be a truck pusher. That is why we invest eighty percent of our projects on education” he told school children and the administration of each school he visited. He also asked beneficiaries to use the donated material in a sustainable way so that those coming later would benefit from it.
He also explained that the choice of handing material to Catholic schools is because these schools are prominent among the schools operating in the Northwest Region, Cameroon. It was also said that SHUMAS realized the projects in collaboration with an the NGO Building Schools for Africa BSFA- UK.