HDRC Program Areas
- Vulnerable Schoolchildren Assistance and Guidance
We are aware that USD 50.00 can pay the school fees and provide basic school needs to a child for one academic year.
We are equally aware of the significant percentage of children who cannot obtain basic education because they are poor, orphaned, of suffer from disability, without any one available or ready to support their education and basic needs.
The program seeks to identify and offer needs-based supportive assistance and guidance to such vulnerable children.
If you wish to help such children, click here.
The program focus is on positive human development but with special attention on three components, namely, early childhood development, youth development, and health psychology.
As a significant entry point for progress with education, economic and social development, early childhood care and education (ECCE) is increasingly being recognized as an important strategy to achieve poverty reduction goals.
The bulk of ECCE caregivers and practitioners in Cameroon and Africa are untrained.
Families, communities and nations differ in capacity and commitment to it, but usually to the detriment of children and women in general and the girl child and her mother in particular.
Families, communities and nations differ in capacity and commitment to it, but usually to the detriment of children and women in general and the girl child and her mother in particular.
The goal of this program is to undertake research to illumine the provision of services to give "a good start in life involving nurturing, care and a safe environment" (African Ministers of Education, 2005) to children 0-8 years through evidence-based interventions with children, their families and other ECCE stakeholders in Africa/Cameroon.
The bulk of ECCE caregivers and practitioners in Cameroon are untrained, while parents are confused about which values to follow in caregiving and guidance of their children.
The HDRC desires to partner with any person, organization and institution that shares its vision and goals to move forward Africa-centric research and services.
The purpose of this program is to understand and generate local knowledge, products and services for children and youth, with the objective of improving the rich heritage and local knowledge and practices related thereto. Reproductive and spiritual health is a key concern of this program.
The goal is to equip children and youth with knowledge and life skills to understand and cope with their sexuality/spirituality and to visualize and gain from the challenges of adulthood, work life and citizenship.
Human health is context-bound. It entails an experienced reality and considerable cultural and power differentials between client and practitioner.
Human health is context-bound. It entails an experienced reality and considerable cultural and power differentials between client and practitioner.
This program seeks to understand this tension, with the objective of strengthening the psychology (the human factor) of health care systems through capacity building and promotion of constructive dialogue and respectful inter-system learning.
The focus is on endemic childhood diseases (HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, etc.), and adolescent reproductive health.
The focus is on endemic childhood diseases (HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, etc.), and adolescent reproductive health.
- Workforce Preparation and Productivity Enhancement (WPPE)
Most African youngsters, especially Cameroonians, are at heightened risk because they are idle.
Hundreds of thousands of young people are unemployed and many are on the street or in more risky spaces; their formal education did not prepare them as job creators nor exploiter of their rich natural environments.
Thus, aware of the poor work ethic and entrepreneurial deficiencies in the general population and young people in particular, the HDRC has designed this program to re-orient youth into responsible and productive values for effective and productive entry or re-insertion into the workforce through knowledge and skills training in assorted vocational fields – ICTs, dressmaking, home décor and domestic appliances, craftwork, carpentry, etc. – in partnership with local apprenticeship facilities and agencies.
Considering the poor and declining work habits in the public and private sectors in Africa in general and Cameroon in particular as well as the lack of the ability for self-employment and productive work life, the program also intends to mount Vocational Training to 're-educate' and re-insert both employers and employees and the jobless into productive values and practical skills of Project Making and Management and Human Services Psychology that underlie customer satisfaction, successful entrepreneurship, and profitable investment.
Training is community-oriented and focuses on the clientele, product consumers, vulnerable children/youth, fragile families/communities and the civil society at large.
Its aim is to envision projects and services that can rekindle and bolster positive work ethic, customer satisfaction, agricultural production, psychological sense of community, and the family-community frontline responses through income generating activities (IGA) and other solidarity/coping strategies.
The training extends to innovative lay/peer counselling.
The aim of the lay and peer counsellor training track is to creatively equip civil society, especially young people with simplified counselling knowledge, people-oriented sensitivity, life skills and techniques to prepare and dispense service projects for peasant farmers, psychosocial and spiritual support to the needy, especially the stigma and discrimination suffered by the disabled, the elderly, and HIV/AIDS infected and affected persons.
The aim of the lay and peer counsellor training track is to creatively equip civil society, especially young people with simplified counselling knowledge, people-oriented sensitivity, life skills and techniques to prepare and dispense service projects for peasant farmers, psychosocial and spiritual support to the needy, especially the stigma and discrimination suffered by the disabled, the elderly, and HIV/AIDS infected and affected persons.
It seeks to support and strengthen family, community, and civil society initiatives in participative self-improvement and community change processes.
- Educational Development and Placement Advisement (EDTA)
The program is designed to understudy, track and advocate the relevance or irrelevance of educational provisions and career development.
It seeks to discover, generate or create 'new' knowledge/products that address problems in practice in Africa's education in the context of agrarian livelihoods.
It seeks to discover, generate or create 'new' knowledge/products that address problems in practice in Africa's education in the context of agrarian livelihoods.
This involves understanding knowledge that may be universal but that is relevant and usefully applicable in local contexts as well as the tensions between the pedagogies of the school and the participative pedagogies of education in African family traditions.
The five components of this initiative include:
- upgrading the capacity and relevance of educational institutions,
- time management and cost-effective learning strategies,
- educational advisement and guidance for effective academic performance and suitable career maturity and vocational entry,
- individual and Group Counselling,
- educational counselling and placement guidance and advisement.