Cross-Cultural Training at the Women's Empowerment Center, Kumba Town

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Kim Cermak, the Director of CFDP's Board, is in Kumba this week!

Much of this day was spent in a classroom at the Women's Empowerment Center, a facility in Kumba that was built I believe either in the 80s or 90s to serve as a gathering place for women. There are conference rooms, sewing machines, and an exercise room there, among other things.

(Just a quick side note: The Women's Empowerment Center is one of CFDP's partnered facilities, which means that we host a lot of meetings there. I think it's really cool that this is one of our go-to places because pushing women's rights and female participation in sports in Cameroon is a huge part of CFDP's mission. In other words, I find CFDP's presence at the Women's Empowerment Center very symbolic.)

Anyway, we were at the Women's Empowerment Center for most of this day because Kim was leading a training session for our management team. The theme of her session was "developing cross-cultural relationships in the workplace, which was perfect for CFDP obviously because half our team is Cameroonian and the other half is American. Kim is very qualified to present on this topic because she has spent her entire professional career either working directly with foreign cultures in the sales industry or providing consulting services in this field to multinational corporations. Kim's session revolved around a PowerPoint presentation and other various sorts of games, activities, and group discussions. Overall, I think everyone found Kim's training session very helpful. Obviously, it was important for us to all acknowledge that our respective cultures have trained us to think, act, and work differently so that we can be conscious of this when working together in Kumba.

The Women's Empowerment Center, one of CFDP's partnered facilities, in Kumba Municipality.

CFDP workers take a break in between cross-cultural training sessions at the Women's Empowerment Center. From left to right: Killian, Nenne, Martin, Caroline, Wera (a volunteer from Germany), and Lauren Mills (American intern).