STICHTING MA-FLO

Foundation Ma-Flo

NOW

Ma-Flo Foundation

 

Policy Plan Ma-Flo Foundation 2020 – 2022

 

Introduction

The ‘Ma-Flo Foundation’ was created on 20.09.2007 to assist ‘Ma Flo’ (Mrs. Florence Foyab-Bergner) in her project and registered under Dutch law, at the Chamber of Commerce of Rotterdam under number 24421756.

A “Ma-Flo Support Committee” was created at Bali, to assure that the school community is involved, children are monitored and money properly spent and accounted for.

 

Background

During a family visit in 2005 to her birth town Bali in Cameroon in West Africa ‘Ma Flo’, Ms. Florence Bergner-Foyab, visited her old primary school. There she was told about children that no longer could go to school, because their parents had passed away.

Ma Flo decided to do something and with gifts from friends and relatives in Cameroon and The Netherlands, Ma Flo started in 2005 to pay the school costs for as many of these aids-orphans as she could.

 

Description of target group

Bali is a small town and district in the English speaking part of the Republic of Cameroon.

The inhabitants are almost exclusively part of the Bali-Nyonga sub-ethnic group, using apart from English, their own vernacular Mungaka and Pidgin English. Farming is the main occupation, with coffee as a cash crop and maize, plantains, cocoyam, yam, cassava, sorghum and various vegetables as food crops.

Although Cameroon is reportedly a middle income country, many families are living below the poverty line of an income of less than two US dollars a day. These families live in cities as well as in rural areas. Bali, being a small town is a mixture of both situations. Families are hard hit by increasing lack of employment and loss of their breadwinner because of AIDS.

HIV-AIDS has become a frequent feature in Africa, Cameroon and so even in the small town of Bali in the North-West of the country. Prevention and awareness came too late so AIDS kills mostly those between 20 and 45, who often have children and are the economic pillar of the family. Luckily the social fabric is still strong, so when both parents die, children are taken in by relatives, which secures their food and shelter. However there are mostly already too many children, so no money for school for the ‘new’ children. Their education will stop abruptly and they will do household chores and put to work on the farm or elsewhere.

 

The members of the Scots International Church Rotterdam (SICR) have been an important source of financial support for the Ma Flo project, since it started in 2005. ‘Ma Flo’ also being a member of SICR, found other SICR members willing to provide institutional support. Hence the ‘Foundation Ma-Flo’ was created as mentioned above. However, it is important to mention that the foundation and the project activities in Cameroon do not have a religious, but a purely secular humanitarian objective and extent.

At the end of 2008 was the first time ‘Ma Flo’ left for a self-funded working visit to Cameroon, carrying funds from the  ‘Foundation Ma-Flo’ to pay for project activities. What followed was the creation of a local Ma-Flo Support Committee in Bali and a regular financial support of the education of selected pupils over the years till 2017.

 

Negative (political) developments during 2017 and 2019

The Anglophone part of Cameroon became federated to the French speaking part in 1961 with the understanding that each would keep its different method of education and judiciary. Going through a constitutional change from federation to union and republic, these guarantees of separate systems were more and more neglected. When this also led to marginalization of the Anglophone Provinces, the lawyers and teachers, supported by the population, publicly demonstrated in October 2017. This peaceful protest was brutally repressed by francophone forces of the central Cameroun Government. Some people were killed, some even shot from a helicopter.

What followed was a struggle for independence of guerrilla-style separatists fighting paramilitary occupying forces of the central Government. This has developed into a full scale civil war with several thousand killed or murdered, 500,000 IDP’s and 50,000 refugees in Nigeria.

This situation also affected the education negatively, villages were razed to the ground and schools closed and even burned.

Fortunately this was less the case in Bali where schools continued to operate until schools were forced to close there as well for most of the abovementioned period.

 

“Ma Flo’s Kids are Safe and Schooling”

This could be reported by the last quarter of 2019, as supported children had found their way into ‘Community Schools’ restoring their education.

 

Intentions of the Policy Plan 2020 – 2022

The Policy Plan for the ‘Ma Flo Foundation’ is intended to develop and structure the activities of the board of the foundation, as fundraising, publicity and institutional support to the board itself and the activities of the ‘Ma Flo Bali Aids Orphans Education project’.

1.    Functioning of the Board of the ‘Ma Flo Foundation’

-        The Board of the ‘Ma Flo Foundation’ will extend its membership with two or three members in order to broaden its base, increase efforts and ideas for fundraising and give advice to the activities of the project in Cameroon. The Board will consider including Mrs. Florence Foyab-Bergner, Project Director of the ‘Ma Flo Bali Aids Orphans Education Project’, as a full board member, though she has been invited to and attended most board meetings as an observer and informant.

-        The Board will write its by-laws in order to regulate the functioning of the ‘Ma Flo Foundation’ in particular the responsibility of board members and their term of office.

-        The Board will, being advised by the Project Director and the “Ma-Flo Support Committee” make efforts to describe the parameters of the ‘Ma Flo Bali Aids Orphans Education project’, including the more direct target group being the supported orphans.

2.    Fundraising by the Board and by the “Ma-Flo Support Committee”

-        The Board of the ‘Ma Flo Foundation’ will make efforts to further diversify and secure its fundraising in order to be able to maintain its level of support for the costs of  education for up to 70 orphans at primary school level.

-        The Board will encourage and assist the “Ma Flo Support Committee” to source for local funding, be it from the Bali District, the North West Province authorities or private organisations and individuals. The main objective will be to decrease the dependence on funding from the Netherlands.

3.    Publicity for the ’Ma Flo Foundation’ and the ‘Ma Flo Bali Aids Orphans Education project’

-        The Board will further develop the publicity materials to support fundraising both in the Netherlands and in Cameroon.

-        The Board will produce and publish an attractive annual report in March each year.

-        The Board will further extend the publicity through sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

5.    Accountancy and administration

-        The Board will structure and regularise the accountancy and administration in collaboration with the “Ma Flo Support Committee”.

-        The Board will decide each year in October or November, which amounts of the funds raised within that calendar year can be sent to the “Ma Flo Support Committee” to be used for the ‘Ma Flo Bali Aids Orphans Education project’.

6.    Development of the ‘Ma Flo Bali Aids Orphans Education project’

-        The Board will research the possibilities to assist the “Ma Flo Support Committee” to start an income generating activity to decrease the dependency on cash fundraising.

-        The Board will research the possibilities to assist the schools where the beneficiaries of the ‘Ma Flo Bali Aids Orphans Education Project are being educated, with financing of improvement of physical structures, like amenities as toilets as well as playgrounds.

 

Timeline, targets, checks and balances

It is not easy to set realistic a realistic timeline or targets and assure that checks and balances are in place, given the situation in Cameroon.

The Board will therefore develop an action plan, which will describe phases of implementation for the above mentioned intentions.

 

Confirmation and adjustments of this Policy Plan

This Policy Plan 2020 – 2022 was confirmed in the ‘Ma Flo Foundation’ Board during an online meeting of 15.03.20. It will be valid till March 2022 and will be adjusted in March of 2021 if necessary or any earlier if the ‘Ma Flo Foundation’ Board so decides.