300 young women aged between 18-35, drawn from the ten regions of Cameroon will benefit from the Young Women Empowered initiative dubbed We-Connect which kicks off in the days ahead.

This information was made known Wednesday September 16 during the official launching ceremony of the We-Connekt initiative presided at by the Minister of Youth Affairs and Civic Education, Mounouna Foutsou.

According to organisers of the initiative championed by the United Nation’s Development Programme and the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, 30 young women will be selected from each region to make up a total of 300 participants.

Thanks to the programme, these women will benefit from intensive trainings and coaching with the aim to improve their educational mind-set and entrepreneurial capacities toward transforming the available economic opportunities into reliable income generating projects.

Besides that, the We-Connekt programme will provide a platform for networking among the participants on the one hand and on the other hand, give them the opportunity to listen to female leaders be it business women, elected women or better still youth leaders who will share their experiences to awaken the dreams of the participants.

The We-Connekt initiative which aims at reducing the gap between the young woman and the young man by investing in the personal development, education and training of the former to enable her be competitive in all domains draws its roots from the Youth Connekt Cameroon project launched in 2019.

Speaking at the launching ceremony, the Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Prof Marie Therese Abena Ondoua said it is a timely initiative which will address the issue of inadequate opportunities available for women.

It will kick off on the ground on Monday September 21 in the North region of the country, reputed as one of the areas where young women are very much vulnerable and exposed to forced and early marriages.

From the North, the teams will move to the Adamawa and then to the West region where they will equally welcome participants from Bamenda.

The programme will run for four months, two months dedicated to training sessions and the remaining two to the experimentation phase.

Depending on the results of this pilot phase, the programme, organisers say could be extended throughout the entire duration of the Youth Connekt Cameroon project.