Aumazo
Aumazo

About Us

Aumazo empowers young women in rural Cameroon and eventually other countries in Africa through high school education and its endless possibilities.

Mission Statement

AUMAZO transforms the lives of girls in rural Cameroon by creating new futures for them through providing access to quality STEAM education with better infrastructure and vocational training options.

ZOMABUILD Construction Business located in Banka-Bafang, is associated with Aumazo. Established in 2013, its eventual profit will help underwrite the recurring expenses of the school in Cameroon.

What AUMAZO Is All About

AUMAZO expanded its reach to work together with other entities that consist of: (i) Aumazo, Inc. in the United States; (ii) Aumazo France; and (iii) Aumazo Cameroon. These three separate organizations’ mandates are detailed below:

Aumazo, Inc. (USA), a 501(c)3 non-profit, aims at transforming the lives of girls in rural Cameroon by creating a new future for them through access to a quality high school education with better infrastructure and vocational training options. The organization helps them design a new future as successful adults and invent ways to make it a reality.
• 2017 IRS Form
• 2018 IRS Form

Aumazo France is a socio-educational membership association that designs, requests funding for the construction and otherwise establishes charitable educational schools for the direct benefit of disadvantaged young people, especially in Cameroon. It provides secondary education and scholarships to these students and increases public awareness. While promoting educational programs, Aumazo France also stimulates general interest in the whole education system and gives support and assistance to staff for managing the proposed school facilities, as well as assistance, advice and support for any group or individual in the pursuit of their educational objectives. Aumazo France does all this, while respecting fully: the actions, the association purpose and the values and ethics of its founding members.

Aumazo Cameroon’s purpose is to promote secondary education access of girls in rural communities and the development of specific programs in the fields of computers, ecotourism and agro-business and helps them create new futures without the constraints of the past.

AUMAZO does this by building local boarding school infrastructure as well as by providing a quality Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, STEAM-based high school education. AUMAZO is not just investing in education; it is investing in Africa’s future community leaders by removing the barriers to a comprehensive secondary school education, by creating a safe and supportive learning environment, and by broadening the educational horizons of girls in rural communities.

Confronting Educational Inequality

Sixty-five percent of girls in sub-Saharan Africa are not enrolled in school. In Cameroon, while 72 percent of girls complete primary school, only 29 percent finish middle school. Just a privileged few make it to high school. The situation is worse in rural areas, where a host of financial, sanitation, and safety factors lead most girls to drop out of school when they reach eight grade.

Our Goal

Aumazo helps girls design a new future as successful adults and invent ways to make it a reality. AUMAZO does this by building local boarding school infrastructure as well as providing a quality Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEAM) based high school education. AUMAZO is not just investing in education; it is investing in Africa’s future community leaders by removing the barriers to a comprehensive secondary school education, by creating a safe and supportive learning environment, and by broadening the educational horizons of girls in rural communities.

Our Work

Thanks to generous donors and volunteers, we kicked off our Aumazo education project in the western Cameroonian village of Bankondji, where we are building our flagship high school, including boarding facilities not normally available to girls in rural areas. We have received permission to create the school and are now in the process of obtaining permission to operate it. At full enrolment the CoReTeK Kamarie School in Bankondji will offer scientific and technical training for 150 girls in a three year program.

Aumazo operates a tutoring program for middle school girls in Cameroon to bring them up to grade standard so they can succeed in the mandatory national high school entrance exams. Our pass rate last year reached more than 85 percent and 29 of the successful girls currently have high school tuition scholarships.

More on our Tutoring Program

Aumazo is also dedicated to working with girls from low socioeconomic groups in any Montgomery County, Maryland Middle or High School in a mentoring program entitled “Girls in STEAM: Giving Meaning to Learning.”

More on our Outreach Program

 

Issues in Girls’ Education

With tuition-free access to a community-based school, no longer will young women of the region be forced to move to urban areas to pursue their education, leaving their friends and family while putting themselves at risk of physical and sexual abuse that’s all too common. No longer will these girls’ absence rates spike after puberty, due to a lack of adequate bathroom facilities in schools. No longer will families need to choose where to invest scarce tuition money – in a daughter’s education or a son’s.

Girls’ education shortcomings in Cameroon

Building for Sustainability

Aumazo also has a fiscal mission – to create a sustainable funding model that supports the ongoing operation of the school(s) we build, well into the future. That’s where our sister organization, ZOMABuild, comes in. It is a social enterprise established specifically to help fund our work at Aumazo.

ZOMABuild is a building material production and construction company based in Newtown Bafang, Cameroon. ZOMABuild uses innovative and environmentally friendly interlocking blocks to reduce the time, manpower, and costs of construction projects. All of ZOMABuild’s profits go toward funding operating expenses of Aumazo’s education program.

ZOMABuild has completed a number of housing projects to-date, but in order to ramp up the business, secure larger contracts, and establish self-sustaining funding for Aumazo, ZOMABuild must invest in additional machinery. Please help us meet that goal and build better futures, one block at a time.

Visit ZOMABuild

Aumazo has made significant progress since its founding in 2005, but we need your support to complete the school in Bankondji and reach more girls in the region. Please help the young women of Bankondji stay in school, realize their potential, and shape their own futures.

Support Aumazo

The Boarding School

Aumazo’s founder, Jacqueline Audigé, was deeply affected by the challenges she faced as a young woman struggling to stay in school in rural Cameroon. When Jacqueline completed her education in the United States years later, she did so with a clear goal in mind: to give back to other girls who lacked the financial and educational support necessary to realize their potential.

That is how Aumazo came about, as Jacqueline’s effort to build a community- based boarding school for girls in her native village of Bankondji, Cameroon, where it is still uncommon for women to be educated beyond middle school.

The CoReTek Kamarie high school in Bankondji, currently under construction, will include well-equipped classrooms, proper sanitation facilities, a gymnasium, a library/study, and a computer room. In addition to an academic focus on critical thinking and STEAM subjects, the school’s curriculum will also feature vocational training – in information technology, agribusiness and ecotourism– to help students find gainful employment upon graduation, even if they do not pursue higher education.

The school will not only provide a safe, accessible learning environment for up to 150 girls each year, but will also play an integral role in the local community, its economic and social development, and the advancement of local women.

We need your support to complete construction of the school and realize Jacqueline’s vision.

Our Partners

Past & Current