I am Nuria,from Barcelona-Spain. I left home with many questions, that were answered in Cameroon within one month!!!!
When I was in Barcelona thinking about my trip to Cameroon the first thing that I thought was that I was going to a very poor country. Although it is true, Cameroon is a very rich place in terms of culture, humanity, environment and kindness.

I arrived in Belo on the 10th May having been kindly picked up from Douala by Joshua. As we had kept in contact before I left the UK I felt as though we were already good friends, which was comforting, having never been to Africa, and being quite nervous about the whole thing.

I spent March-June 2010 working with RUDEC. My arrival coincided with the departure of a small army of volunteers, so the vast majority of my time in Belo was spent working with Joshua and necessitated my involvement in all aspects of the organization's processes and projects.

Since its beginnings, RUDEC has been incredibly appreciative of all the support it has received from generous donors. Your assistance has enabled us to clothe, educate, and provide medical aid for over 50 orphans for the past 3 years. Beginning in March 2010, RUDEC has embarked on a new campaign in an attempt to reach a level of self-sustainability.

I volunteered for RUDEC for 6 months, from October 2009 to March 2010. I found the opportunity for 'Business Development' on idealist.org and was attracted by the small friendly nature of RUDEC, and that the organisation did not charge fees for volunteering. I was excited to go to Cameroon as I had always wanted to travel to West Africa and see a country off the usual tourist trail.

I spent 3 months volunteering for RUDEC. For the first part of my stay, I facilitated the building of a community water tap for a village with limited running water. For the second part of my stay, I developed a Community Health Education Initiative to promote improved hygiene practices and health. My time in Belo was both very rewarding and tremendous fun.

RUDEC Testimony – Reinoud Vaandrager

I found RUDEC while doing a Google search for 'Beekeeping internship'. Given Joshua's background in Natural Beekeeping and the added bonus of having a good reason to visit Cameroon (with a letter of invitation from RUDEC) sealed the deal for me.

Since about a month RUDEC now owns 2 more websites:

1) cameroontourist.com
2) africancooking.org

Both of these sites are designed to generate sustainable income for the organization:

Cameroontourist.com is aimed at promoting tourism to the Belo region which might generate income for RUDEC though organizing accommodation and guides.

Africancooking.org is an initiative to generate supplemental pension income for the old people's club by taking some of their traditional Cameroonian cooking knowledge and monetizing it online through Google Adsense.

We are just starting out, so if you can help promote our sites please let us know! :)

RUDEC Newsletter

Issue 2, February 2010

RUDEC NEWS

Those of you that have not visited the website for a while should take a look, as we have updated much of the content to make it more relevant to the projects that RUDEC is running at the moment.