Monique Ntumngia is a human rights advocate against violations on women and girls. She is very passionate about entrepreneurship and promoting sustainable development in Africa with the use of renewable energy.
Currently she is the President of the Green Girls NGO and CEO & Founder of Monafrik Energy. Her impressive track record includes: 3000 households supplied with biogas, 672 young girls trained, 23 communities helped and tremendous media exposure in Africa, Europe, America and Asia.
Monique Ntumngia has been the Director of Sales and Marketing of Heta Energy in Cameroon and Program Officer in charge of Gender and Human Rights for the Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education. She started her career as company Executive Legal Assistant for Human-As Cameroun. Monique fluently speaks English and French and is a holder of an LLB Law from the University of Buea in Cameroon.
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Can you tell us more about the Cameroon’s Green Girls Project?
The Green Girls organization’s activity is to render girls financially independent through inclusive educational tech training on renewable energy, in a bid to eliminate poverty and fight climate change.
Since activities commenced in October 2016, 672 girls from 23 rural communities have been trained- from 3 out of the 10 regions of Cameroon. Over 3000 households have been provided with biogas and over 100 homes installed with solar panels.
How do you select the girls to train and what’s the duration of training?
Communities are chosen based on a sample resulting from a native never- seen- before SDG scoring model. Eligible communities are pre- selected with the participation of donors or grants.
In that community, the number of girls to undergo training is shortlisted, representing the demography of the locality. The flexible constraint for Green Girls is to target girls aged 14 – 18 years.
Training runs from a week plus, depending on the number of girls and the community.
How are you able to support this project?
The project is mainly supported by grants from donor organizations, the cross fertilized team made up of: Cameroonians, Senegalese and French and strong partnerships.
What obstacles would you say that you’ve had to overcome to get where you are today?
Obstacles encountered have been numerous ranging from economic, social, cultural, technological, regulatory and demographic.
Economically, the cost of training is very high and funds from donor organizations are not always easy to come by There is also the high cost of equipment and transportation to the communities.
Social obstacles include the orientation of mindsets to adopt clean green practices and language barrier.
The resistance to using renewable energy to cook because of fears that food cooked with biogas wouldn’t taste properly was a bit of a cultural obstacle.
Technologically, the training requires accurate expertise in the domain of renewable energy which is not easy to have because not many are trained in the field of renewable energy.
Regulatory authorizations have not been easy to acquire permitting the training to be carried out in communities.
Demographic obstacles include the massive trend of rural exodus in the communities.
What are some of the traits every lady should adopt in order to succeed?
The traits every lady should adopt to succeed are:
a) Unpack your fears and take bold steps to conquer them
c) Be passionate about what you do and be focused
d) Stand your ground and show your strength
e) Always think positive and keep an optimistic spirit
Do you have any other passion projects you would like to develop?
Green Girls focuses on the actual project in order to trigger organic growth.
Share with us a fun memory from your teenage years.
Having to interact and empower young Muslim girls in Kano on the advantages of education.
Are you in the renewable energy field?
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