Citizen Outreach Cameroon (COC) is five years old and like most children of that age, the organisation has crawled, creeped and now walking, albeit timidly. COC Cameroon is the local branch of UK registered charity Citizen Outreach Coalition, (COC) Created to empower men, women and children from impoverished backgrounds with employability skills, vocational training and physical/mental health improvement, COC Cameroon has learnt to survive in an increasingly difficult world with funding cuts, difficulties navigating local bureaucracy and a sceptical population that in some cases, believes NGOs are no different from the governments that should have provided the services they now think is their divine right to provide
On how she will explain the work COC Cameroon has so far done and the challenges the organisation faces going forward, Douala Coordinator of COC Mme Ebu Doris decided to do this through the prism of some of the people the organisation has supported in the last five years.
Here is her report;
Emmerencia, a slightly built dark skinned girl is 20 years old. She now works as a hairdresser in a small saloon in Bonaberi, Douala. Her story is similar to that of thousands of other girls her age displaced by fighting between armed separatist and government forces in English speaking Cameroon. She is now an internally displaced person in Douala, the Littoral region of Cameroon. Her parents were killed in 2019 in Wum, a small village in North Western Cameroon, one of the two regions affected by the separatist fighting.
trajectory has not been easy, especially at the peak of the Anglophone crisis when both of her parents were killed in Wum, a village in the North West Region of Cameroon. In her own words, “Life can never be the same. After explaining my situation to COC, they provided advice and eventually paid for my apprenticeship. She now works under someone with plans to open her own saloon as soon as she gets the necessary capital
Glory, another IDP (internally displaced person) is 21 years old and is preparing for the 2025/2026 GCE A-Levels. She narrates a story similar to the first, exclaiming that “thanks to COC Cameroon, she has been able to further her education. COC paid for fees for three years before she could do it herself through a small business she runs selling eggs and other groceries during weekends and holidays.
These are just two stories of many but they demonstrate a pattern. COC Cameroon looks out for and supports the most vulnerable people and checks up on how they are doing following the support
As part of COC Cameroon’s activities in educating the girl child, some students of Bova Technical School received free menstrual pads at the end of a one-day training workshop on Hygiene and Sanitation in December 2025.
This was to empower the girls to become responsible by supporting each other in times of crisis. On October 18, 2025, COC Cameroon collaborated with other women’s groups in a 3-day seminar in Yaoundé to join the fight for change by engaging actively to ensure free, credible, and violence-free elections. There was of course post electoral violence after the 2025 presidential elections but not on a scale like in other African countries where post electoral violence is endemic.
Some underprivileged and internally displaced pupils from the Triumph Industrial Primary and Nursery School received shoes, school bags, and didactic materials to assist them, like their peers, to sail smoothly through the 2025/2026 academic year. In the same ceremony,
COC Cameroon has provided mosquito nets that’s prevents mosquito bites, the main cause of deadly malaria in tropical countries. The organisation has also organised 4 planned visits to the Kondengui maximum security prisons in Yaounde and the Douala New Bell prison where prisoners were provided with raw food, cooking oil and other basic necessities.
There are plans for future projects COC intends to deliver.
According to official statistics in Cameroon, approximately 12% of secondary and high school students in Douala Region are involved in illicit drugs.
COC Cameroon is planning a project that will provide support and preventive strategies
Challenges
Identifying beneficiaries can be hard as there are a lot of people who fake their impoverishment to benefit from projects. According to Mme Ebu Doris, a lot of victims of the Anglophone crisis do not want to reval themselves after they settled in the francophone towns. Hear her; “
“ it’s been a daunting task. Our main challenge has been identifying the children to support. I have been to areas where people are suffering but do not want their neighbours to know they are victims of the separatists and government forces fighting in the North West and South West regions”. They fear being targets in the future.
Ebu Doris concluded the future will be bright but a lot of work needs to be added. COC needed more grant funding or to develop an income generating model so the organisation can support people without writing long and winding applications for grants.
She hopes COC Cameroon grows into adulthood smoothly
