Cameroon Catalyst is a student driven international development charity promoting sustainable development in rural Cameroon. We bring together students and specialists to deliver essential infrastructure projects in some of the least developed communities in the country.
Our vision is for rural communities in Cameroon to possess the autonomy and opportunity to achieve their own sustainable development towards a fulfilling, healthy and prosperous future.
Our mission is to act as a catalyst for sustainable change in rural Cameroon by delivering needs-assessed infrastructure which remove development barriers and empowers local people to engage with their own sustainable development.
We are driven by teams of dedicated students at the University of Southampton, the University of Birmingham and Imperial College London and managed day-to-day by a senior committee of industry professionals.
We were co-founded in 2009 by a team of civil engineering students at the University of Southampton in partnership with a native Cameroonian living in the UK. Our first programme of works between 2009 and 2014 prioritised the village of Bambouti. Over five years we delivered five independent projects addressing five interconnected development needs including a medical centre, apprenticeship workshop, school buildings, solar power hub and improved housing.
In 2013, following the successful delivery of our programme of works in Bambouti, we conducted a full assessment of the development needs in the wider Eastern Region of Cameroon. Our assessment identified that a lack of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) Infrastructure was the biggest barrier to sustainable development. Since then, we have been developing our own WaSH programme, and delivering projects in line with this. To date we have delivered seven clean water wells, a rainwater capture and storage system and an improved pit latrine.
We recently launched our Strategy for 2022 - 26 which seeks to build on our portfolio of successful WaSH projects and are looking for specialist volunteers to support is in delivering this.
To ensure we are most effective in achieving our purpose, we conduct our work through four focus areas. Within each focus area we define what we hope to achieve, what we do to achieve this, and the impact we have. Our focus areas were chosen to reflect what is most important to us as a charity and structure our approach irrespective of our current priority.
We deliver essential needs-assessed infrastructure projects to some of the least developed communities in Eastern Cameroon.
We involve local communities throughout the project delivery lifecycle to ensure our solutions consider the cultural, religious, economic and political setting.
We support our students to become future civil society leaders and sustainability thinkers.
We aspire to partner and share our best practice and lessons learned with the wider industry.
