Developing resilience in times of emergencies among youths in cameroon
Abstract
The Anglophone crisis in 2016 and the outbreak of the COVID-19 global health emergency in March 2020, in Cameroon have tremendous effects on the entire population in Cameroon and the world at large. Both emergencies and its economic and social impacts have disrupted nearly all aspects of life for all groups in society especially the youths. People of different ages, however, are experiencing its effects in different ways. For young people and especially for vulnerable youth, the Anglophone crisis and COVID-19 crisis poses considerable risks in the fields of education, employment, mental health and disposable income. Moreover, while youth and future generations will shoulder much of the long-term economic and social consequences of the crisis, their well-being may be superseded by short-term economic and equity considerations. In this light, this paper focuses on developing resilience in times of emergencies among young people in Cameroon as well as creating resilient communities so as to avoid exacerbating intergenerational inequalities and to involve young people in building societal resilience. Governments need to anticipate the impact of mitigation and recovery measures across different age groups, by applying effective governance mechanisms and policies in order to help youths to be able to overcome and bounce back in times of emergencies. This paper, therefore addresses two emergency situation within the Cameroonian context (the Anglophone crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic) vis a vis its impact on education and health of youths. It continues by examining Resilience, risk reduction and sustainable development, building resilient communities in times of emergencies, technologies for building the resilience of communities and key policy messages
References
Barr, S., Devine-Wright, P. (2012). Resilient communities: sustainabilities in transition. Local Environment, 17:5, 525-532.
Berno, T. (2017). Social enterprise, sustainability and community in post-earthquake Christchurch: Exploring the role of local food systems in building resilience. Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Vol. 11 Issue: 1, pp.149-165.
ESCAP (2012). Building resilience to natural disasters and major economic crises. ESCAP Theme Study.
Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change, 16, 253-267.
Fomba, (2011). Community Role/Engagement in Vocational Competence Development. In Nsamenang, A.B. & Tchombe, M.T. (Eds) Handbook of African Educational Theories and Practices: A Generative Teacher Education Curriculum (518-528): HDRC.
Gallup (2019), Gallup World Poll, https://www.gallup.com/analytics/232838/world-poll.aspx.
Hashiguchi, L. (2018). Positioning adolescent health as a cornerstone of the SDGs. Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation: University of Washington.
IFRC (2012). Characteristics of a safe and resilient community. 1224200 E 05/2012. Geneva.
Kafle, S. K. (2012). Measuring disaster-resilient communities: A case study of coastal communities in Indonesia. Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, (s. l.), v. 5, n. 4, p. 316–326.
Morton, S., Pencheon, D. & Squires, N. (2017). Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and their implementation: A national global framework for health, development and equity needs a systems approach at every level. British Medical Bulletin, 124:81–90 doi: 10.1093/bmb/ldx031.
OECD (2018). State of Fragility, OECD Publishing.
OECD (2019). Society at a Glance 2019: OECD Social Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/soc_glance-2019-en.
OECD (2020). “Unemployment Rates, OECD - Updated: May 2020”, http://www.oecd.org/sdd/labour-stats/unemployment-rates-oecd-update-may-2020.htm.
Pan, J., Su, X., Zhou, Z. (2015). An alternate reality game for facility resilience (ARGFR). Procedia Engineering 118 (2015) 296 – 303.
Salvia, R., Quaranta, G. (2017). Place-based rural development and resilience: A lesson from a small community. Sustainability 2017, 9, 889.
Tchombe, T. M. (2011). Cultural strategies for cognitive enrichment in learning among the Bamiléké of West Region of Cameroon. In Nsamenang, A.B. & Tchombe, M.T. (Eds) Handbook of African Educational Theories and Practices: A Generative Teacher Education Curriculum (205-216): HDRC.
WHO (2020). Statement – Older people are at highest risk from COVID-19, but all must act to prevent community spread, http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies/coronavirus-covid-19/statements/statement-older-people-are-at-highest-risk-from-covid-19,-but-all-must-act-to-prevent-community-spread.
Ziervogel, G., Cowen, A., Ziniades, J. (2016). Moving from adaptive to transformative capacity: building foundations for inclusive, thriving, and regenerative urban settlements. Sustainability 2016, 8, 955.
Copyright (c) 2021 Asangha Ngufor Muki
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
In submitting the manuscript to the International Journal on Integrated Education (IJIE), the authors certify that:
- They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
- The work described has not been formally published before, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, thesis, or overlay journal.
- That it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere,
- The publication has been approved by the author(s) and by responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
- They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
- They agree to the following license and copyright agreement.
License and Copyright Agreement
Authors who publish with International Journal on Integrated Education (IJIE) agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the International Journal on Integrated Education (IJIE) right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors can enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the International Journal on Integrated Education (IJIE) published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or edit it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
