Betterworld Cameroon

Growing up in a farming community in Bafut, where gardening was a compulsory subject in primary school, Joshua Konkankoh developed an early passion for working on the land.

Until 1996, Konkankoh was running a gardening company called Royal Gardens. Besides selling gardening services, he bought 5 acres of land in a previous landfill, in Yaoundé, and created a community garden for the youth to have access to land to develop their own pathways in life. The site was located on a riverbed and the landfill provided lots of compost material. The urban garden used rural agricultural techniques. The site was visited by many people and counted with the collaboration of numerous volunteers. Konkankoh created an innovative volunteer system: people were contributors to a pool of skills, labour, food, knowledge, while at the same time being beneficiaries of it.

In 1996, BWC was created. Royal Gardens was being taxed out of business. By founding a non-profit organisation, the work could carry on by founding the NGO Better World Cameroon. BWC was also a way to prove to the youth that it is possible to live along the lines of volunteer collaboration and a not-for-profit approach similar to the village community cooperative structure called “Njangi”. The francophone culture in Yaounde rejected the values preached through the community garden. Konkankoh’s team was expelled from the site and the community garden was destroyed in 2012.

BWC’S APPROACH:

Better World Cameroon is an attempt of a local response to a global crisis. BWC sees cooperatives as a model for community development and a path to:

Create food sovereignty: Colonization took over the land and built a system dependent on modern forms of slavery and disruption of people’s culture. The youth got disconnected from the land, as they saw no benefit in participating in this form of agriculture. Permaculture brought dignity and sovereignty back to young farmers;
Promote landscape regeneration through permaculture practices;
Rebuild the local economy and values.

BWC has been working to heal youth apathy about national life, by focusing its work on the re-establishment of the connection of youth with their land, their food sources and their cultural heritage. Food is a core element of any culture. All cultural traditions circle around food. BWC educates people about the cruelties behind consumer goods, inflicted upon their fellow brothers & sisters and to the land. We want to bring ethics back to food.

Mission Statement:

We are dedicated to the goal of sustainability in our Ecovillage project-based vision, hands-on education oriented towards organic agriculture using indigenous knowledge and fair trade, while paying attention to the principles of innovative volunteerism and youth exchange.