Since 2021, we have worked in Yaoundé with Bright Association, a Cameroonian humanitarian organization, teaching young people who fled the violence in Cameroon's English-speaking northwest and southwest. We started with a single workshop for internally displaced youth, classroom sessions and shooting in the field. In 2022, we refurbished a building in the Efoulan neighborhood into a learning center with computers, DSLR cameras, and internet for distance learning with our advisory board and partners like Canon. In 2023, we hired our first local instructor, Daniel Beloumou, who leads in-person classes each week.
In 2024, the program widened to take in more students, including refugees from instability elsewhere in the region alongside those displaced by the Anglophone conflict. Several alumni have earned full scholarships to the Centre d'Éducation aux Médias et à l'Information (EDUK-MEDIA) in Yaoundé, where they are training in media production. The program now runs from a new classroom and gallery, with room for more students and space to show their work to the local community through exhibitions.
Through the Canon Young People Programme, students build their work around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and Canon trainers have run filmmaking workshops with them as part of the Miraisha Program. Students leave able to shoot, edit, and tell a story on camera.
