Just like I do, girls too can build houses!

As a kid, I looked forward to every 11th of February with uncommon excitement. For me, it was all about taking a taxi from the local quarter where I grew up to the heart of the nation’s capital, Yaounde to march past top administrative authorities and beautifully constructed buildings. On this day special day, which is the celebration of youth day, one had to stay healthy to obtain approval from parents and gain energy to visit the central town and march past the might buildings that always caught my attention.

With all my excitement, I couldn’t resist glancing at some might buildings from the corner of my eyes as it was forbidden to turn my head. I can’t forget a particular building that I kept looking at to the point that I missed my steps and almost fell. I made sure I never missed any event that occurred around central town for another chance to stare at that building. My interest kept on growing in that field.                                       

When it was time for me to go to university, my mother struggled to orientate me, as I had no mentor. Back then mentoring was not popular. I was fortunate to have an educated mum who supported me so much to the best of her ability. During one of our discussions, I related the stories about my admiration for designing houses to her. She was fascinated and quickly registered me at the National Advanced School of Public works in Yaounde where I studied Civil/Rural  Engineering. I was part of a class where for over 35 students 5 were ladies 

Coming from a male chauvinist background has been challenging in addition to always being in a class made up of 85 % male, having negative perspectives of girls excelling in hard-core science subjects as they saw it as a male domain at all levels of my education. These views were partially reinforced by male teachers who perceived the class as made up only of boys. This situation has had little changed despite a public policy in favor of promoting girls in Science, Technology, and math (STEM). 

I have experienced many years of struggling through technical education to emerge as a female leader and I have been able to build strong influence in empowering girls with STEM skills via hands-on training to increase their interest in STEM.

Sophie dreams of a world with equal access to education. This dream of mine led me to becoming the founder of an organization working to foster youth social and economic empowerment by promoting girl child technical education for job creation named Centre for Youth Education and Economic Development.

My personal experiences drives my actions to contribute my efforts within the school milieu where I have contributed to keeping over 1000 young girls in STEM fields and changing the perception among male instructors about actively supporting girls in STEM.

I’m very passionate about building the next generation capacities in STEM for women and girls so, so I created a digital empowerment lab running since 2014 and I want to expand it to a Construction Makerspace, to train young women and girls on building construction and computer-aided design skills. This project will inspire and motivate many more girls in Cameroon and beyond to consider Building construction and design as a future career thereby increasing the representation of women in STEM.