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Our Approach
Breaking Ground is powered by community, inspired by grassroots
initiative, and committed to sustainability.
Through our personal networks of friends, families, and acquaintances,
we raise money to enable Cameroonians to realize small-scale,
community-initiated projects. In doing so, we are committed to
facilitating relationships of mutual respect and understanding between
the communities with whom we work and the contributors who make our
projects possible.
We believe that effective, desirable, and sustainable change must
originate within the community for which it is intended. Cameroonians
know better than anyone else what their own communities need, thus
Breaking Ground’s projects are conceptualized, organized, and realized
under the guidance of local Cameroonian community members. Though many
of our projects have focused on education and clean-water access, we
are open to funding any project that indiscriminately benefits the
entire local community, is small-scale and financially feasible, and
requires minimal long-term maintenance—some of the bases for
sustainability.
Each year, we select highly qualified individuals who serve as “Ground
Coordinators” for our projects in Cameroon. Stationed in either Dschang
(in the Western province) or Ngaoundéré (in the
north-central province of Adamaoua), Ground Coordinators engage in
routine volunteer work specific to their qualifications and interests.
As they live and work in Cameroon, Ground Coordinators seek out
motivated communities with pre-established project goals. Once an
appropriate and feasible community project has been selected, Ground
Coordinators harness financial support from communities around the
world in order to raise the funds necessary to make the project a
reality.
Breaking Ground is committed to a personal and transparent approach to
fundraising and project implementation. We believe that it is essential
that our contributors both see and participate in the concrete changes
they make possible. Through our website, our contributors may access
detailed records of our budgets and expenses, track the progress of our
projects with regularly updated photographs and reports, and
communicate their feedback and questions directly to our Ground
Coordinators, officers, and Cameroonian counterparts.
In serving as a pathway by which communities unite to undertake
projects, Breaking Ground builds much more than schools and water
sources. With every project that we help implement, we embark on a
mission of bringing people together through intercultural awareness,
human compassion, and the shared satisfaction of participating in
grassroots community action.
It’s about grassroots. It’s about sustainability. It’s
about creating cultural and global awareness. It’s about making
positive change. It’s about building communities from the ground
up. It’s about breaking ground.
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