By Kum Seraphine Sangha
The 18th annual general assembly of the Cameroon Association of Media Professionals (CAMP) was held last Saturday August 12th at the Victoria Guest House in Limbe, with members drawn from all corners of the Cameroon territory.
While addressing members of the General Assembly, the National President of CAMP, Solomon Agborem, welcomed all who made out time to answer present in this year’s annual gathering where he called on everyone present to use the meeting to take stock of the activities and make projections for the upcoming year 2024. The National President also thanked Defy Hate Now for being a committed partner.
He expressed how delightful he was to welcome especially new members who were joining the association and participating at the AGM for the first time. Solomon Agborem also recounted some of the progress made so far especially for the fact that during the year, members of the association attended a couple of trainings, round table discussions on early warnings signs for communities in crisis situations.
“We attended the leadership innovative workshop which took place in Buea, hosted a delegation from Civic Watch Rog Agency from Germany who visited the Head Office of CAMP, we also had UNCHRD-CA officials from Yaounde who visited here, in line with the project ‘youth, peace initiative’, a project that we are working to implement hopefully by the start of next year 2024 in collaboration with the United Nations Centre for Human Rights for Democracy for Central Africa. CAMP is also looking forward to introduce other activities which members will be informed before the year runs out”, he enumerated.
In a training workshop which took place earlier that day, CAMP members were trained on cross cultural communication.
Norway based Cameroonian ,Esther Buenkee who is a journalist and a facilitator, used her wealth of experiences to drill journalists on some aspects of cross cultural communication, explaining that people have different definitions for different things, depending on how they relate with the subject.
She told journalists that learning to integrate in other people’s cultures is very important, thereby urging journalists to always do background checks when going to cover events in a new cultural setting. Checks like how the people of the area talk, eat, dress and behave, use body language etc.
Meanwhile, still during the workshop training, Mr Kinang Derick Fai representing Defy Hate Now, schooled journalists on some of those topics which promote and propagate hate speech, Some of which words like “invaders, chop broke pot, cam no go” etc and called on journalists to embark on positive report to combat such hate speech in the society.
He preached on love and tolerance and some of the ways to mitigate hate speech, as well as properly managing diversity and cross cultural stereotypes, “trying to tolerate and accept people for who they are is one of the best ways to put an end to hate speech”, he mentioned.
Journalists therefore being the fourth power of the realm have a huge task ahead to change this narrative as hate speech is known to make an individual feel mean depending on the background he or she is coming from, in relation to what hate speech is said to them.
The annual assembly meeting was characterised by other activities such the presentation of regional reports by delegates from each region, presentation of the financial balance sheet by the director of administration and finance, setting up of next hosting venue for the AGM and in resolutions, members unanimously agreed to create a website that will give the organisation more visibility, more sourcing of funders for the VIIMMA and rigorous sourcing of membership to be carried out by the national executive.