Cameroon

Rosemary is a holder of a Bachelors Degree in Women and Gender Studies and Law (Double Majors) from the University of Buea Cameroon. Her active involvement and participation in activities aimed at promoting youths in Cameroon since the year 2008 led to her appointment as Cameroon’s Youth Representative to the Commonwealth in September 2011.

Prior to her appointment, she occupied leadership positions in youth led organisations in her country such as Junior Chamber International and the Cameroon National youth Council. She also participated and represented her country in several trainings and conferences both at national and international levels. In the year 2009, she was awarded the prestigious Moremi Initiative fellowship for Women’s leadership in Africa. Similarly, she took part in the Young Women’s Knowledge and Leadership Institute (YOWLI) in Dakar -2010. Further, she represented her country at the UN Women Consultative Conference for youth which took place in Kigali in May 2011.

Currently, she is consultant on issues pertaining to women’s human rights and youth development.

Her Message to Commonwealth Youths:

My message to youths of the Commonwealth is that; Youth participation and involvement in development policies is paramount to sustainable development in emerging economies and also in developed nations. This is to say, sustainable development cannot be fully achieved if key agents or stake holders such as youth and women are left out in the formulation, implementation and evaluation phases of development policies. Thus, they ought to engage themselves as active participants in the development processes of their respective countries and the world in general.

More so, a clear understanding of the issues vices affecting the world today by youths will lead to a unique force of change to make their future convenient in harmony with the environment due to their enthusiasm, imagination and abundant energy to undertake local action, and act as effective communicators in their communities and in the international arena.

The evolvement of ICT and the social media is a powerful tool which young people can utilize in order to create positive change in their communities and the world in general by using it as a means of advocacy, information dissemination and learning. Thus, instead of putting blames on our governments for our predicament, lets be the change first by asking ourselves what we have done for our communities and secondly by engaging our peers to adopt positive attitudes towards self development and community service and also make effective use of the resources which we have at our disposal while advocating for others.