Red Deporte in Cameroon

Red Deporte has been working in the East of Cameroon since 2012, supporting the vulnerable situation of refugees from the neighboring Central African Republic conflict.

Sport, and especially football, is used with two main objectives: to improve the attendance and performance of young female refugees in the school system; and to promote basic health among the most vulnerable refugee and local populations in the East of Cameroon. Our program is supported mainly by FIFA Football for Hope, the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID), and the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon. Over the past six years, our multisectoral program has built two primary and secondary schools and provided football, basketball, and volleyball sports facilities to two community schools.

The health project takes advantage of a playful sports environment to promote health education and the fight against infectious diseases. It also addresses the poor sanitation and hygiene conditions in the refugee environment where we work, the East of Cameroon.

Our program focuses on issues such as child and youth immunization and the development of protective factors in the school environment, such as hand washing, basic protection against malaria, or reducing risk factors in domestic or school environments, like maintaining hygiene in restroom areas.

Special emphasis is placed on primary prevention of highly prevalent diseases such as malaria, HIV, diarrhea, or tuberculosis, using football’s ability to generate high attendance from young people at the recreational-sports spaces where we carry out our awareness-raising work. You can access HERE videos that explain our work in Cameroon in more detail.