Every programme exists to remove one specific barrier between a child and a classroom. Some have run for over a decade; others are where we are heading next. Which is which is marked below.
Our programmes
Back to School
Running
Our flagship. Every year, at the start of the school year, we put hundreds of children back in the classroom at once.
Operation Ten Thousand Francs a Child began after a needs assessment in the Buea municipality found large numbers of children out of school, some who had dropped out, some who had never been enrolled, and many who were academically capable and simply could not afford to attend.
The design has not changed in twelve editions: ten thousand Francs CFA covers one child's fees, uniform and materials for a school year. Children collect their packs at a single event, alongside their families.
The first edition reached 127 children. The most recent reached 880.
12
Editions delivered
880 children
Most recent edition
10,000 Francs CFA
Cost per child
Educational Sponsorship
Running
Long-term support for one named child, continuing year after year rather than one school year at a time.
Where Back to School is annual and broad, sponsorship is sustained and individual. A sponsored child's fees, materials and mentoring continue for as long as they remain in education.
Progress is tracked with the child's school. Sponsors receive updates at the end of each school year, within the safeguarding rules that govern what can be shared.
Girls' Education
Running
Targeted support for girls, who face the steepest barriers to staying in school and see the greatest returns from finishing.
When a family cannot fund every child through school, girls are usually the ones withdrawn first. The consequences compound: earlier marriage, earlier childbirth, and a far narrower set of choices for the rest of their lives.
The first cohort we registered in 2012 was deliberately majority girls, 20 of 32. Alongside it, 30 mothers received start-up capital or funds to grow an existing business, because a mother with her own income is the most reliable guarantee that a daughter stays in school.
20 girls of 32 children
First cohort
30, in 2012
Mothers supported
Emergency Support, photograph to follow
Awaiting asset
Emergency Support
Running
Rapid help when a family's circumstances would otherwise take a child out of school mid-year.
During the peak of the regional crisis, ordinary programme delivery was not possible. Support continued anyway, at a smaller scale and directed at the children whose education would otherwise have stopped entirely, including university students whose funding had collapsed.
Those editions reached fewer children than the years either side of them. We report that plainly rather than smoothing the line.
School Infrastructure, photograph to follow
Awaiting asset
School Infrastructure
In development
Safe, equipped places to learn, because a classroom has to be somewhere a child can actually concentrate.
Paying a child's fees achieves less than it should if the school itself lacks basics. This is where we intend to direct larger institutional and corporate funding as it becomes available.
Digital Learning, photograph to follow
Awaiting asset
Digital Learning
In development
Access to tools and connectivity that open up learning beyond what one classroom can hold.
An area we are actively developing rather than one with a track record. We would rather say so than imply a programme that does not yet exist at scale.
Community Projects
In development
Work alongside families and local leaders so gains in education hold across a whole community.
Education does not survive in isolation from household income, health and food security. Our economic empowerment work with mothers is the first piece of this; broader community development is the direction of travel.
Partnership
Delivering Impact Together
Teach Me To Fish Foundation (TMTF) is a UK-based charity with a mission to transform children's lives through education in Cameroon. While our supporters and donors make this work possible, it is the strength of our team and trusted partners on the ground that turns that support into meaningful, lasting impact.
Our flagship Back to School programme is delivered by the TMTF team in Buea in close partnership with the Centre for Youth and Family Empowerment (CEYOFE), founded and led by Eteki Stella Dopgima, Founder and CEO of CEYOFE, Gender Expert and Director of the Women's Empowerment Centre Buea.
Centre for Youth and Family Empowerment (CEYOFE)
Partner organisation, Buea, Cameroon. Sourcing and vetting
Eteki Stella Dopgima
Founder and CEO, CEYOFE
Gender expert
Director, Women's Empowerment Centre, Buea
Stella and the CEYOFE team bring invaluable local knowledge, trusted community relationships and hands-on experience to our work. They help identify communities where support is most needed, source and assess potential beneficiaries, engage directly with children and families, and scout credible grassroots NGOs with whom we can collaborate.
This local insight is critical. CEYOFE undertakes much of the important groundwork that allows TMTF to understand needs first-hand and ensure our support reaches the right children and communities.
The CEYOFE team in Buea, who source and vet the children and carry the school requirements out to the community.
TMTF provides funding, strategic direction and programme oversight, working alongside CEYOFE to plan and deliver initiatives such as Back to School. Together, we take school requirements directly into communities, listen to children and families, and provide the practical educational support children need to start and remain in school.
Accountability is equally important to us. Smaller NGOs identified for collaboration are assessed before funding is committed. Rather than providing unrestricted grants, TMTF funds agreed activities and programme delivery, allowing us and our partners to remain closely connected to how resources are used and the impact they create.
We are also grateful to the foundations, community organisations, volunteers and individual supporters who contribute alongside us. Their participation transforms an individual charity initiative into a wider community effort.
Thanking our individual supporters
Many of the individuals behind that support are our own peers, friends and family, giving from the UK, Cameroon and further afield, and they rarely ask to be mentioned.
We would like to thank them properly one day with a recognition page, and we will build one if and when they are happy to be named. Until then, this is the thank-you: it is your giving that puts these children back in a classroom.
Our model is deliberately collaborative: TMTF connects resources and supporters in the UK with trusted leadership and delivery expertise in Cameroon. CEYOFE, under Stella's leadership, helps us bridge that distance, ensuring our ambitions are informed locally, delivered responsibly and grounded in the realities of the communities we exist to serve.
Together, we are not simply giving children school supplies. We are creating the conditions for children to learn, grow and build opportunities for themselves, teaching them, in the spirit of our name, to fish.
Fund the work
Back to School runs every year. Whether it reaches eight hundred children or a thousand is decided by what comes in before it.
