Damaris Mounlom, Cameroun

Photo by Ann Chwatzky

"I believe that women have the greatest potential to bring about change in their communities. Women in Cameroun already have associations. We, in FESADE, decided that we would have the greatest impact on children's and women's health by training association members throughout the country. We expect them to share what they have learned—about nutrition, AIDS prevention, family health, among other issues—with the women in their group. They in turn share this information first with their family before going out into the larger community. The results we are seeing encourage us to continue to train women and also to expand the geographic areas in which we work. Our involvement with women, and with communities, has helped us to see that poverty is women's most pressing problem. So, we are working with them to create economic opportunities. Providing health information alone is simply not enough."

About Damaris

Damaris Mounlom, a nurse with two years of postgraduate education, has been involved in community health for more than three decades. Much of her effort has focused on mobilizing communities and helping them learn how to identify and then solve their own problems. After serving as director of Cameroun's nursing schools for twenty years, Damaris led evaluations of public and private health programs for the Ministry of Health. Currently, she is coordinator of Femmes, Sante, Developpement (FESADE, or Women, Health, and Development), a nongovernmental organization with offices in both Yaounde, Cameroun's capital, as well as the capital of the Central African Republic, Bangui. FESADE, in the absence of national sexuality education, developed a curriculum it has shared with other community groups and hopes to see integrated into government schools nationwide. More than 18 thousand adolescents have followed the curriculum as of July 2002. FESADE is also the creator (with Johns Hopkins University) of a widely read book on community health education that conveys strong messages about adolescent sexual and reproductive rights. Damaris has worked extensively with the World Health Organization on reproductive health, including HIV/AIDS, as well as child immunization.

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