Enlightening Entertainment
 
The Shining World Compassion Award: Mr. Genesis Tinshu, Founder of Helps International in Cameroon (In Bassa)      
Today’s program will be presented in Bassa and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), (Bassa,) Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Thai and Spanish.

Everywhere in the world, we can observe and be touched by acts of kindness. People from all walks of life, faiths, and cultures extend themselves beyond the call of duty to help others unconditionally. Through their noble deeds, humanity as a whole is elevated.

To commend virtuous actions and encourage more people to be inspired by their examples, Supreme Master Ching Hai has lovingly created a series of awards, including the Shining World Leadership Award, Shining World Compassion Award, Shining World Hero and Heroine Awards, Shining World Honesty Award, Shining World Protection Award, Shining World Intelligence Award, and Shining World Inventor Award, to recognize some of the most exemplary, generous, caring, and courageous people who walk amongst us.

My name is Besong Vandavice Agwosaya and this computer center, operated by Helps International is helping so many of us in this community, because we obtain free-of-charge computer classes and this is improving our chances of making our lives better. So, we thank them for helping us in this way and hope that they keep up with this good job.

It is such earnest students as Besong that the organization known as Helps International wholeheartedly serves. Located in the city of Buea, the capital of the Southwest Province of Cameroon in Africa, Helps International (HINT) was founded in 2002 by Mr. Genesis Tinshu, a graduate of the University of Buea. His mission was to improve the social and economic well-being of the underprivileged in society through education, skills development, and job creation.

In my heart, what I want to achieve, what I live to achieve is to make a meaningful contribution to transform the community where I live. I want to see people’s lives changed, I want to see people live better lives. I want to see people get better health, I want to see people come out of poverty. That’s what’s in my heart.

Through an acquaintance with one local young man, Mr. Tinshu was motivated to establish a system that could help to better the lives of Cameroonians.

I met this young man who was released from prison and he approached me and asked for help. And I could remember that I helped him go to the town where he needed to go. And from that moment, something began in my heart and I began to say: “How I wish, there was a system set up to be able to help this person.” He is just out of prison, he’s going back to his family, maybe after 25 years. Who is going to help him?

In 2002, Mr. Tinshu proceeded with the founding of Helps International to provide a type of organized system to assist less fortunate people. With Mr. Tinshu’s background in mathematics and computer science, he set up an IT (Information Technology) center to equip the local youth with necessary computer knowledge.

Setting up a community IT center where people can come and connect with the rest of the world has been a huge thing. It has helped a lot of people to be able to find schools abroad where they can study. We focus mainly on the training aspect of our program. Since we started, I would say we have seen at least a 1,000 young people equipped with skills, that have gone through our center for the past four or five years that we’ve been running the program.

With those skills, they can find a job in an office as an office assistant, or a secretary.

In Cameroon, the government provides free primary school education. However, textbooks and uniforms are required for admission to attend some schools. Orphans and children from impoverished families who cannot afford educational expenses may never attend school. Though resource sharing and reuse, Helps International helps provide these basic supplies for schoolchildren.

We started what we call a community education library. And so we bought the textbooks that children use in primary school and we stocked them in a library. And what we do is at the beginning of the school year, we loan these textbooks to the children and then they use the textbooks in schools, in the different schools where they are. They return the textbooks to the library. And then we can give the same set of textbooks to another group of children for the next year. With a certain quantity, certain stock of textbooks, we can educate a whole generation of children.

Helps International also created an initiative for women to help them join the work force.

We started the program with the women where we provide training on microcredit. We begin with a training that offers basic business skills. At the end of the training, we get them to put together a business plan or business proposal. We work with them in this process, helping them identify a business that would do well for them, well in their locality, in the area where they are.

When our program on the Shining World Compassion Award series resumes, we will learn more about the compassionate activities of Helps International in Cameroon. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Helps International is helping to change the lives of people in Cameroon.

I want to see people live better lives than they normally live, especially the poor people, especially the underprivileged people. To help people come out of poverty, come out of low standard of living and begin to live a life that really makes sense and brings happiness and makes them feel that life is worth living.

Welcome back to today’s segment of the Shining World Compassion Award series, as we continue our program spotlighting Helps International which is based in Buea, Cameroon. This is a public-spirited organization devoted to enhancing the welfare of the community through public health programs, classes that develop information technology skills and job-creation projects to name just a few. The microcredit initiative of Helps International has helped numerous women towards a better life.

One of our beneficiaries, and at the time that we met her, she had a business with a total of just about 50 dollars and that was all her business. But she’s been doing this same business for about 10 years. And out of this business worth a total of 50 dollars, she has been able to send two of her children to school, to university actually. She has been so faithful in savings.

Everyday she saves, she saves something. And through that and through a series of five, ten years, she has been able to do a lot. And so we see that microcredit is a huge opportunity, is a great way to help people in Africa and other developing countries to come out of poverty.

Helps International also supports the local Cameroonian community through its HIV awareness program.

We thought that the best thing would be to educate people to change their behaviors. And so what we do here is that we run seminars in the communities.

It’s totally free of charge.

Touched by Mr. Tinshu concerned efforts through Helps International and his big heart for the less fortunate people of Cameroon, Supreme Master Ching Hai honored Mr. Tinshu with the Shining World Compassion Award. She also made a US$10,000 contribution to further the organization’s noble work. Mr. Tinshu was presented with the crystal award plaque along with a framed letter of recognition from Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Dear Mr. Tinshu, It is with the greatest pleasure and admiration that we present to you and Helps International the Shining World Compassion Award. This award is presented in recognition of your outstanding humanitarian efforts to improve the lives of others through unconditional love and exemplary dedication and for your enlightened leadership bringing comfort, hope, opportunity and a brighter future for West Africa. We wholeheartedly thank Helps International for its unparalleled efforts in aiding humanity.

May Heaven bless your workers and allow Earth to be graced with more noble work inspired by your compassionate example. For your expansive love in the service of others, for your wisdom, idealism, and caring spirit, for actively advancing social and economic opportunities and public health, and for being an exemplary role model for humanitarian causes worldwide; we hereby applaud and celebrate the noble deeds of Helps International and its dedicated volunteers and supporters. With Great Honor, Love and Blessings, Supreme Master Ching Hai

Thank you very much. Yes, thank you.

And so along with that we have a plaque that is the Shining World Compassion Award.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yes, thank you.

Supreme Master Ching Hai’s #1 international best-selling books, “The Birds in My Life,” “The Dogs in my Life,” and “The Noble Wilds,” along with various CD and DVD publications were also gifted to Mr. Tinshu.

I am very grateful to Supreme Master Ching Hai and the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association for recognizing what we are doing in the city of Buea in the southwest of Cameroon. It is an amazing thing when you work out there in such a remote area, and you think that nobody cares and nobody is looking at what you're doing and then suddenly somebody shows up and says, “I like what you are doing. I appreciate what you're doing.”

And so, on behalf of Helps International, I truly want to say that we are very grateful for the fact that Supreme Master Ching Hai has put her eye on what we are doing. And not just that we’re thankful for the awards that she has made, and also the donation of US$10,000 that is going to take us a lot farther from where we are right now. So once again, I want to say thank you.

We thank Mr. Tinshu and all volunteers of Helps International for their caring work in assisting Cameroonian brethren regain their sense of dignity as beautiful and helpful people in society. May Heaven bless their noble mission with all success.

For more information on Helps International, please visit

Blessed viewers, thank you for joining us for today’s segment of the Shining World Compassion Award series. Coming up next is Words of Wisdom right after Noteworthy News. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television. Praised be the gentle nature and innate kindness of all beings.

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