For more than seventeen years, the Authentic Memorial Empowerment Foundation (AMEF) has stood alongside communities in Cameroon’s North-West and South-West regions through displacement, disruption, and, time and again, through recovery. Today, AMEF is proud to announce its role as an implementing partner on the PIKIN Initiative, a new eighteen month programme dedicated to protecting and supporting the region’s most vulnerable children.
In Cameroonian Pidgin, pikin simply means “child.” It is a fitting name for a project built entirely around them. Since 2016, the crisis in the North-West and South-West has displaced families, shut down schools, and left thousands of children without access to safety, education, or even a legal identity. The PIKIN Initiative exists to change that.
PIKIN is led by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), working in consortium with INTERSOS, AMEF, and SIRDEP, and funded by the European Union’s humanitarian aid arm, ECHO. Each partner brings something essential to the table. NRC contributes technical expertise in education and WASH, INTERSOS leads on child protection and case management, and AMEF and SIRDEP, as long standing national organisations, bring the deep territorial presence and community trust that make safe and effective delivery possible.
With offices in Kumba, Mamfe, and Buea, and a longstanding network of volunteers, focal points, and partnerships with traditional councils and youth groups, AMEF will help lead the delivery of education and child protection services at the heart of this project. This includes running Child Friendly Spaces, supporting catch up classes for out of school children, distributing school kits, and helping communities establish their own protection structures. AMEF also played a key role in co conducting the multi sector needs assessment that shaped this project from the ground up.
Within these eighteen months, the PIKIN Initiative will directly reach 14,799 people, more than half of them women and girls, including 1,462 persons with disabilities, through an integrated response that touches nearly every part of a child’s life. On the protection side, the project will establish Child Friendly Spaces, form community protection committees, and provide case management and dedicated support for survivors of violence. Alongside this sits a strong legal assistance component, helping children and families obtain birth certificates and other legal identity documents that so many were forced to leave behind or never had the chance to secure. In education, children will receive psychosocial support, attend catch up classes designed to bring them back up to speed, and be equipped with school kits that make it possible for them to return to the classroom and stay there. And because none of this works without basic dignity and health, the project will also improve access to clean water, latrines, and hygiene promotion in schools and Child Friendly Spaces.
True to its mission, the consortium has adopted a joint implementation approach. As the project progresses, activities will be gradually transferred to AMEF and other local partners for long term monitoring and ownership, ensuring that what PIKIN builds continues long after the funding ends.
“AMEF has always believed that lasting change in our communities has to be community led,” the organisation notes. “Being part of PIKIN allows us to keep doing what we’ve always done, standing with the children and families of the North-West and South-West, with even greater reach and impact.”