For over a decade, the Far North Region of Cameroon has lived under the shadow of the Boko Haram insurgency. Young people have been among the hardest hit—many have lost loved ones, witnessed violence, or been displaced from their homes. These experiences have left thousands at risk of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

To respond to this urgent need, Association SEMBE, with support from Grand Challenges Canada, launched the Community Mental Health Support for Young People Affected by the Conflict project.

The project began in 2021 with a pilot phase and expanded in June 2023 to reach more young people until February 2025. It works in nine conflict-affected communities across the divisions of Mayo-Sava, Mayo-Tsanaga, and Logone-et-Chari, including Makoulahe, Amchide, Kolofata, Maxi-Mabass, Moskota, Tourou, Biamo, Blangoau, and Fotokol.

Our Goal

To provide accessible, community-based, and culturally appropriate mental health support for young people aged 10–24.

We do this through:

• Community Wellbeing Centres (CWBCs): safe hubs for counseling and psychosocial support.
• School Mental Health Clubs: spaces where students connect, share, and learn healthy coping skills.
• Training community influencers: equipping teachers, youth leaders, women and men leaders to serve as lay counselors.
• Awareness raising: breaking stigma and promoting mental health in schools, homes, churches, mosques, and community spaces.

Key Achievements

Since 2021, the project has reached thousands and created lasting change:

• Expanded Reach: 8,893 young people accessed lay counseling services in schools and communities, while 5,000 students received mental health education from trained teachers.
• Improved Wellbeing: Over 85% of beneficiaries reported feeling better (measured with the WHO-5 index). Mobile clinics with psychologists brought advanced care for cases of depression and anxiety.
• Community Structures: Nine Community Wellbeing Centres and 14 school mental health clubs are now fully functional.
• Local Capacity: 130 teachers, social workers, leaders, and youth have been trained in trauma-informed care and psychological first aid.
• Awareness Raising: More than 25,000 people were reached through door-to-door campaigns, community talks, and group discussions in schools, churches, and mosques.

Voices from the Community

• “The beneficiaries now feel they are not alone. They are happy and no longer suffer from social isolation.” – Social Worker
• “The program helped reduce stigma and gave people a chance to talk openly about their mental health.” – Community Leader
• “When I first came here, I was in a lot of pain. After a few sessions, I started to feel like I belonged. Now, I feel so much better and I can interact without fear.” – Young Beneficiary
• “The training has equipped me to identify students who are struggling and support them compassionately. I see the difference it makes every day.” – Teacher
• “Before this project, we didn’t know how to help our children. Now we have a safe place to go and people we can trust. This project has given us hope.” – Parent

Looking Ahead: A Call to Action

The Community Mental Health Support project has shown that with the right care, young people can heal, regain confidence, and find hope for the future. Yet the demand far outweighs current resources. Thousands of children and youth in Cameroon’s conflict-affected areas still face trauma, stigma, and barriers to care.

With your partnership, we can:

• Expand Community Wellbeing Centres to reach more villages.
• Establish additional school mental health clubs so students have safe spaces to talk and learn.
• Train more teachers, social workers, and community leaders to become lay counselors.
• Sustain mobile clinics to bring specialized care to those in need.
• Strengthen advocacy with government stakeholders to make mental health education a nationwide practice in schools and to integrate community-based mental health care into the public health system.

Your support can help us scale this model, ensuring that every young person—no matter their background or circumstance—has access to compassion, healing, and hope. Together, we can transform lives through community-based mental health care.

Background

Since 2013, the Far North region of Cameroon has been deeply affected by the Boko Haram crisis, layered on top of pre-existing intercommunal conflicts. Many young people, particularly those living along the border with Nigeria, have been recruited by armed groups due to poverty, lack of opportunities, and weak community structures. Recognizing that young people can also be powerful agents of peace, SEMBE launched the RELEV Project (Strengthening Youth Engagement to Prevent Violent Extremism) in 2021, with the support of the Global Center for Cooperative Security.

The project sought to build the leadership skills of young people and strengthen collaboration between youth, community leaders, and local authorities to promote peace and prevent violent extremism.

Our Solution

The RELEV project worked in four communities heavily affected by insecurity: Aïssa Hardé and Makoulahe (Mayo Sava Division) and Moskota and Maxi-Mabass (Mayo Tsanaga Division). Sixty young people (40% girls) were selected, trained, and engaged in leadership and peacebuilding initiatives. The project also involved 20 traditional, religious, and community leaders to foster intergenerational dialogue and collaboration.

Key activities included:

• Community mobilization to introduce the project and select beneficiaries fairly and inclusively.
• Youth leadership training on conflict management, peacebuilding, and prevention of violent extremism.
• Workshops with youth and community leaders to strengthen collaboration around public policies on peace and security.
• Youth forums in Mora and Mokolo, bringing together young people and leaders to share experiences, identify challenges, and develop community action plans.
• Follow-up and evaluation, including the production of two documentaries capturing success stories from the project.

Achievements and Impact

The RELEV project achieved remarkable results in just eight months:

• 60 young leaders trained (24 young women and 36 young men) on peacebuilding, leadership, and conflict resolution.
• 4 community action plans developed and implemented, addressing local conflicts and promoting peace.
• Increased youth–leader collaboration, with young people now better recognized as credible actors for peace in their communities.
• Radio programs produced in local languages to raise awareness on peace and social cohesion, reaching thousands of listeners.
• Success stories captured, including young people leading initiatives like birth registration campaigns, repairing broken bridges, and organizing awareness sessions on peace and coexistence.

Community members testified to a visible change: leaders acknowledged the capacity of young people to drive peace initiatives, while young people reported improved knowledge of violent extremism and greater confidence in engaging with authorities.

Voices from the Community

“Hearing what other youths have accomplished taught me that we don’t always need to start with big projects—small initiatives can make a real difference.” — Youth leader, Maxi-Mabass

“This project opened my eyes to the capacities of our youth. Hearing their proposals makes me proud to support them.” — Community leader, Makoulahe

“I used to think violence at home was normal. Through this project, I learned it is also a form of extremism, and I changed my behavior.” — Young participant, Aïssa Hardé

Looking Ahead

The RELEV project demonstrated that when young people are empowered, they can become champions of peace rather than targets for recruitment into violence. SEMBE plans to build on this success by supporting youth groups to sustain their initiatives, strengthening cooperation with local authorities, and promoting education as a long-term solution to radicalization.

With your support, we can scale this model to more communities and continue building a future where young people lead the way in preventing violence and promoting peace.

Background

Since 2017, Cameroon’s Anglophone regions have been gripped by an armed conflict that has disrupted daily life, crippled healthcare systems, and left families struggling with trauma, insecurity, and poverty. Health facilities have shut down as medical staff fled to safer areas, leaving communities with limited and expensive access to care.

The crisis has also triggered a rise in mental health problems—depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse—made worse by the near absence of mental health services. In response, SEMBE launched the Vital Signs Initiative  to provide both physical healthcare and psychosocial support to vulnerable populations.

Our Solution

The initiative combined mental health awareness, primary healthcare, and disease prevention in a single community-based program. Services provided included:

• Mental Health Support: Awareness sessions, counselling, and psychological first aid.
• Primary Healthcare: Free consultations and treatment for common illnesses; referral of severe cases to hospitals.
• Disease Screening: Free tests for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B & C, malaria, diabetes, hypertension, and prostate cancer.
• Health Promotion: Training of youth peer educators on mental health, hygiene, and disease prevention.

Community leaders, religious leaders, and youth groups helped mobilize the population, secure venues, and ensure participation. Local health professionals provided technical expertise for consultations, counselling, and lab testing.

Achievements and Impact

Over the course of four days, the initiative reached hundreds of people across all age groups:

• 219 people received mental health counselling and support, with cases ranging from trauma, anxiety, and depression to alcohol and drug abuse.
• 423 patients consulted for primary healthcare, with malaria, respiratory infections, skin diseases, and untreated STIs among the most common.
• Hundreds screened for chronic diseases, revealing high numbers of untreated hypertension and diabetes, especially among the elderly who had stopped taking medication due to poverty.
• Youth peer educators trained, creating a community-level network to continue awareness on mental health and disease prevention.

Importantly, individuals newly diagnosed with chronic conditions were linked to care, and those testing positive for HIV were connected to treatment centres.

Voices from the Community

“I have lost everything… I felt better off dead. This initiative gave me someone who listened and supported me. Now I know I am not alone.” — Mama Lizette, 58, widow and survivor of multiple losses during the conflict.

“I had not taken my hypertension and diabetes medication for eight months. Thanks to SEMBE, I received care, lab tests, and three months of treatment. I feel alive again.” — Pa Dan, 72, widower.

“I suffered from an untreated infection that isolated me from my peers. The free screening and treatment gave me back my confidence and life. I thank SEMBE from the bottom of my heart.” — Julien, 17, orphan.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

While the initiative made a strong impact, it also revealed major gaps:

• Most local facilities lack mental health services, making follow-up difficult.
• Awareness of non-communicable diseases is very low; many had stopped treatment unknowingly.
• Beneficiaries expected broader financial support (like hospital fees), highlighting the need for clearer communication.

Despite these challenges, the initiative showed the urgent need for integrated healthcare and mental health support in conflict-affected communities.

Looking Ahead

With additional funding, the Vital Signs model can be scaled by:

• Establishing mobile clinic units to reach more remote communities.
• Strengthening mental health follow-up cells for continued counselling and care.
• Expanding community sensitization campaigns on both mental health and chronic disease management.

Vital Signs proved that with the right support, even short-term interventions can save lives, restore dignity, and bring hope to conflict-affected communities.

Background

In Cameroon’s Far North, particularly in the Mayo Sava and Mayo Tsanaga divisions, girls face enormous challenges. The Lake Chad Basin conflict, poverty, and climate change have weakened schools and other basic services, leaving adolescent girls most at risk. Many families still see girls only as future wives and homemakers, not as students or leaders. As a result, many girls drop out of school or are forced into marriage before age 15. While boys are encouraged to learn, girls are pushed toward early marriage and domestic life, limiting their dreams and opportunities.

Our Solution

The Sahel Girl Power 237 project works to break these barriers by promoting inclusive, gender-sensitive education in six communities—Makoulahe, Amchide, Kolofata, Tourou, Maxi-Mabass, and Moskota. We address the root causes of school dropout for girls—child marriage, sexual exploitation, abuse, and child labour—through activities such as:

• Creating girls’ clubs in schools.
• Training teachers and girl leaders on gender-responsive education.
• Setting up community peer support groups.
• Running awareness campaigns on the importance of educating girls.

Our Approach

Our goal is to ensure that girls in crisis-affected communities have access to safe, quality, and relevant education. We focus on four key areas:

• Empowering teachers: We train them on gender equality, positive discipline, and child protection, while providing materials to create safer and more respectful classrooms.
• Engaging communities: We organize dialogues, campaigns, and events to raise awareness and shift harmful attitudes about girls’ education among parents, leaders, and religious authorities.
• Supporting girls directly: Through school clubs and peer groups, girls gain life skills, confidence, and knowledge of their rights. They learn about health, self-care, gender-based violence, and decision-making.
• Improving access and retention: Sixty girls who had dropped out returned to school with scholarships, while 200 vulnerable girls received school supplies to reduce barriers to education.

Our project targets six Boko Haram–affected communities with large numbers of displaced and vulnerable families. Girls themselves are involved in designing, leading, and monitoring activities—ensuring their voices shape the project.

Key Achievements and Impact

The Sahel Girl Power 237 project has already made a strong impact, shifting community attitudes and opening doors for girls.

• Produced the Debbo Rewdo Girls’ Manual, co-created with adolescent girls, covering education, self-confidence, leadership, and financial skills.
• Trained 12 teachers and 18 girl leaders to champion girls’ rights in schools and communities.
• Engaged more than 2,000 girls through school clubs and peer groups—many hearing about gender equality and their rights for the very first time.
• Supported 260 vulnerable girls with school materials and provided 60 scholarships to revive the hopes of girls who had dropped out.
• Sensitized over 3,000 community members, including 300 parents, about the importance of educating girls. Many parents admitted poverty and insecurity often force them to choose boys over girls, but our sessions helped them see the value of keeping girls in school.
• Established girls’ clubs and peer groups as safe spaces where girls can talk about issues like menstrual hygiene, gender-based violence, and education.

Voices from the Field

“For the first time, I understood that I have rights as a girl. Now I want to finish school and become a teacher.” — A 14-year-old club member

“I never believed girls could lead, but today I see my daughter speaking in public with confidence. I am proud.” — A parent in Kolofata

A Call to Action

The progress made by Sahel Girl Power 237 is only the beginning. Early marriage, poverty, and insecurity remain huge obstacles, but with your partnership we can do more.

Together, we can:

• Share the Debbo Rewdo girls’ manual with more communities.
• Expand advocacy with government and traditional leaders.
• Document and amplify girls’ success stories.
• Build a sustainability plan so that change continues beyond the project.

Your support is an investment in the future of Sahel. Together, we can empower a new generation of girls to become leaders, innovators, and agents of change in their communities.

The rising waters of Lake Chad and the Logone River during the severe 2024 rainy season flooded vast areas of the Makary and Biamo communities, causing devastating material and human losses. Crops such as rice, beans, and sorghum were washed away, leading to extremely poor harvests. As a result, malnutrition increased sharply, especially among children aged 6–59 months, pregnant and lactating women, and the elderly. While humanitarian programs offered treatment for Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), support for Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) was very limited due to resource and capacity gaps.

Our Solution

To address this urgent crisis, SEMBE launched the project “Sembe Pap: a high-energy custard to overcome moderate acute malnutrition in Makary and Biamo.” Pap is a popular staple food in the region. Building on this tradition, our team developed a fortified version using locally available ingredients—corn, soybeans, dried fish, millet, and groundnuts—rich in carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, and vitamins. This enriched pap was designed to treat MAM, while also promoting food diversity and introducing climate-smart farming techniques to improve local production of the raw materials needed for the pap.

Our Approach

The project was built on five main pillars:

Capacity building: Ten Community Health Workers (CHWs) and four nutrition assistants were trained on malnutrition screening using the Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) method, as well as on nutrition counselling, healthy eating, and climate resilience.

Mass screening: CHWs conducted door-to-door malnutrition screening in Makary and Biamo, reaching even hard-to-access villages.

Pap production: Two Sembe Pap recipes were developed—one based on corn, groundnuts, and fish, and another using millet, beans, and fish. A local production unit was established in Makary, engaging women agro-pastoralists in ingredient preparation, grinding, and packaging. Forty vulnerable women also received start-up kits to run small businesses selling corn, millet, beans, and groundnuts in their communities, helping families reproduce Sembe Pap at home.

Nutrition management: Two centres were set up at Makary and Biamo health facilities to distribute Sembe Pap. Beneficiaries attended weekly sessions for health checks, nutrition counselling, malnutrition screening, and pap distribution. Each beneficiary followed a 12-week program managed by trained health staff.

Climate resilience: Fifteen farmer groups were trained on climate adaptation techniques and provided with seeds and tools to boost the production of staple crops used in Sembe Pap.

In short, the SEMBE Pap project developed a nutrient-rich pap using local ingredients, empowered women and CHWs to detect and manage malnutrition, and built resilience against climate impacts.

Our Achievements

This community-led approach transformed lives across Makary and Biamo:

• Over 16,500 children under 5, pregnant and lactating women, and elderly persons screened for malnutrition.
• 611 MAM cases enrolled in the nutrition program, exceeding the target of 350. An additional 209 SAM cases were referred for hospital treatment.
• Our 12-week nutrition program achieved a 94% recovery rate among beneficiaries, surpassing the goal of 75%.
• 99% of beneficiaries reported being “highly satisfied” with Sembe Pap and said they would recommend it to other families.
• Over 2500 people sensitised on food diversity, healthy eating habits, climate change and climate resilience
• 50 farmers from 15 groups trained in climate-smart farming, organic fertilizers, and crop conservation.
• 40 vulnerable women supported with business start-up kits to strengthen their economic independence.

Voices from the Community

The impact of Sembe Pap is best reflected in the voices of those it touched:

A grandfather’s gratitude: “I was already desperate with this situation… I thank Allah for putting Sembe in my path. After just one month, my daughter is doing well, she has gained weight, and she consumes this porridge like mother’s milk.”

A nurse’s pride: “We see children and pregnant/nursing mothers recovering from malnutrition, and families protected from disease. We see hope and resilience being reborn.”

A caregiver’s empowerment: “The training and sensitization we received helped us raise awareness among others about the nutrition of children, pregnant/nursing women, and the elderly.”

Looking Ahead: From Project to Legacy

The SEMBE Pap project is only the beginning. The results are being shared through academic publications, and we are now working to transition the initiative into a sustainable social enterprise led by local women. With your support, we can scale this innovation, ensuring SEMBE Pap becomes a lasting solution in the fight against malnutrition.

Join us in building a brighter, healthier future for children and communities across Cameroon.