Today’s Good People, Good Works will be presented in Kamtok (Cameroonian Pidgin), Mankon and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

We widows of Mankon,
We are here to say welcome,
We are here to say welcome,
We say welcome to you.
We say welcome to you We say welcome to you,
We say welcome to you We say welcome to you.

Charitable viewers, thank you for joining us for our program featuring Hope for the Underprivileged Association (HUPA), an organization situated in Mankon-Bamenda, the regional capital of the northwest region of Cameroon.

Orphans were just floating the streets; widows were very miserable. Children were not going to school; many of them were sick, and we felt it was terrible to leave these children all by themselves. So, a handful of women, six of us in number, decided to come together, pull our resources, and see how we could help these children, even by just buying books, or just providing half fees.

From such humble and sincere hearts, Hope for the Underprivileged Association was founded in 2002. The organization gradually extended their assistance to include widows in the community.

We started up by empowering them, to get a better technical know-how on food production. We saw that if they could produce more food and good quality, they will be able to sell and have enough for themselves to eat; and the children will not be looking miserable.

Cameroon has a population of over 17 million, and over 75% of them depend on agriculture for livelihood. And so, this has motivated us to take up the agricultural sector with the widows. We have targeted cassava production and processing them, pepper production and marketing them.

We embarked on seeing that their yield was improved. We provided them with methods of making farmyard compost using grass and so on. Then, we did not end there; we took them forward again, to be able to plant good seeds. So, we supplied them with a good variety of maize, good variety of beans from MEDENO (North-West Development Authority).

They guide us and advise us on what we can do to help our children, to help our families, to help ourselves. And to enable us to train ourselves, to be able to survive without a husband, and also to enable us to train and help our children. To learn farming, set up a small business. So that we can be examples of the good widows of Mankon.

Education provides a strong foundation to rise out of poverty. Hope for the Underprivileged Association believes that through schooling children can develop their capabilities to become productive members of the community.

We decided to develop a basic education help package. That is support in terms of full school fees, in terms of school needs like books and even uniform.

I’m Madam Clara Monte, the head teacher of Catholic School Alamatu, and I’m here on behalf of these children, whom HUPA helped to pay their fees last year. I’m very contented. Thank you very much, HUPA.

Thank you, HUPA, for paying our fees.

Given the opportunity to education, the orphans showed their aptitude for academic excellence. They demonstrated their gratitude through their remarkable performance in school and the beneficial careers they choose to embark upon.

Most of them are brilliant as for their results, and some of them are already carrying out activities in workshops that is straight after primary education.

Some are seamstresses, hairdressers, carpenters, mechanics, and what have you.

Foster parents who benevolently open their arms to welcome orphaned children into their homes also receive assistance from Hope for the Underprivileged Association.

So, to ensure a degree of sustainability and continuity, we decided also to elaborate an income-generating package that will build, the economic level of foster parents, to ensure that there is continuity after registering success in this support program.

We teach the foster parents to treat the orphans as their own real born children. They don’t discriminate them. We also teach the foster parents how to feed themselves and the children, so that they should not become malnourished.

From the activities of HUPA, so far, the impact has created a multiplier effect in the sense that the mindset of some of the orphans, of the foster parents of the orphans have changed, in such a way that some of them are able now to continue with the education, not only education but the care and support back at home. They manage the orphans just as they would have done with their own biological children.

Another facet of Hope for the Underprivileged Association’s work is in the provision of healthcare.

Madam Gladys, here by me, is their healthcare nurse. She takes good care of them, encourages them to live happily, and they are looking lovely now. Misery is a thing of the past. So, they’re very happy and we ourselves, we’re happy.

For people living with HIV/AIDS, we also realized that the aspect of nutrition is very important in their lives; and that to give them supplementary food items would not address the problem on a broad base front. So, we decided to elaborate an income-generating activity package that seeks to address their socio-economic problem. Through the years, Hope for the Underprivileged Association has been recognized for its altruistic and laudable initiatives for society, earning it support from other organizations.

Our impact, we have emerged from sorrow to joy, from hopelessness to hope, from nothing to something, from malnutrition to nutrition, from illiteracy to literacy, and from ignorance to education. We feel big. We feel it is something worth trying and it makes us stronger, braver more hopeful.

We’ve met people like TMG Foundation in London, the Miriand Foundation in Holland; the Nyendong family and you name the rest, who are able to collaborate with us, and come in powerfully too, to help us face our challenges in a brighter way.

Fruits of the group’s labor of love include the beautiful transformation in the lives of the many orphans and widows.

You saw the joy they had when they were receiving you. They are always happy. They are always by us. They think big, they are happy, and they feel part of the society because they are no longer marginalized. We give them hope, we show them love; we care for them and they feel very happy.

The women have actually emerged from misery to joy. They can produce enough food, quality food; good seeds bring out good food. And so they have enough food now; they have enough yams heads to plant in their farms. We’ve equally prescribed a type of cassava stem for them to plant.

We help them get this cassava stem from MEDENO, and they are growing on their farms. Some have already started harvesting. And they make gari, they make nkum nkum, they make wata fufu, and you name the rest. So, they can live on the income from their farm.

We thank HUPA, for enabling me to obtain this farm, where I’m harvesting these vegetables right now, whereby I can feed myself and my children, and indeed everyone in my house. I wish them the best. May God bless them for guiding us in this fruitful way.

Thanks to you I have these vegetables to feed my family. We thank God. We thank all of them. We thank Supreme Master Television for coming to share love with us right here on the farm.

The principles of sharing and “love thy neighbor” are at the cornerstone of all faiths. Hope for the Underprivileged Association strives to be an example in action of these noble ideals.

I wish to draw the attention of the underprivileged to all the average class, that they can in their own small way do something. Even if it means buying just a textbook for an orphan or an underprivileged child, if it means even giving a liter of oil to the widow who is so desperate, if it means even morally supporting them, in their own way, let the society or the community, join hands together to make our society as a whole a place to be. We should not be selfish. We should collaborate with the have-nots and help them across the sadness life.

For their benevolence and kind assistance to fellow Cameroonians, Supreme Master Ching Hai is honoring Hope for the Underprivileged Association with the Shining World Compassion Award and a contribution of US$10,000 to further their noble work in providing a brighter future for orphans and widows.

The word of God is sweet in my heart.
The word of God is sweet as honey.
The word of God is sweet in my heart.
The word of God is sweet as honey.
The word of God is sweet in my heart.
The word of God is sweet as honey.
The word of God is sweet in my heart.
The word of God is sweet as honey.
The word of God is sweet in my heart.
The word of God is sweet as honey.

Thank you very much, Supreme Master Television. Thank you for thinking of us in this suburb, and we wish you very bright moments ahead. Thank you.

We convey our deep gratitude to Hope for the Underprivileged Association for your heartwarming love and tender care for African brethren. May Heaven grace you with continued success in your noble endeavors.

For more details on the Hope for the Underprivileged Association,
please contact (Tel) +237 77 48 59 66
(E-mail) hopa_01@yahoo.com

Generous viewers, it was a pleasure to have your company for Good People, Good Works. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television. Let us cherish the true treasures of inner tranquility and happiness in life.