Genesis Etali is the director of Sustain Cameroon. He recalls: “While in my early secondary school days, I made a firm decision to work to end conflicts in our world. I nurtured the dream throughout my secondary, high school and University education. After graduating from the University, I opted to volunteer with local, national and even International nonprofit development organizations to offer my services to assisting in making the world a safer place for all and particularly for the vulnerable, the abused, oppressed, discriminated. My desire and passion was to work in the heart of our very resource poor and vulnerable local communities bringing alternative options to managing the conflicts that beset our communities with innovative development initiatives. I worked for organizations that provided aid to the people in the areas of my passion, alternative conflict management & transformation, empowerment, promotion and protection of the rights of women and children.”

“However, after over 18+ years of extensive and intensive work, community mobilization and activism with these organizations, it was very evident that their interventions were not adequately touching the felt needs of the targeted beneficiaries and communities. Their approach and work was focused more on the strategic needs (almost if I can say too distant & sophisticated solutions) and with inadequate attention to the practical and unmet needs of the vulnerable and affected people and thus exacerbate their living conditions that were not visibly changing as they could not easily meet their basic needs to survival and thriving. These people would rise up to facing similar challenges daily or see the same problems lurking before them with no sustainable solutions and thus are almost perennially exposed to further abuses and exploitation. Efforts to provide them with skills, materials, tools and resources to revert their conditions have not really been considered and elaborated adequately.”  

“Thus, coming from a background of extensive grassroots engagement and work and constantly having to deal with the desires of the people to come out of their conditions and to be able to put food on their tables, to pay for their own & children’s education, to pay for their primary health care and to live a fulfilling and dignified life. Overwhelmed with the burden to seek ways of providing immediate solutions to the vulnerable, I was propelled and challenged to create an organization that would focused on providing the heart desires and immediate needs of the people. Thus, SUSTAIN Cameroon was born to ensure to it that the people are not further estranged from services and opportunities that can enable them to adequately transform their conditions of living through providing their practical and unmet needs and ensuring that these affected women, children and their families are able to secure access to their basic needs.”