Ewi Stephanie Lamma

Meet Stephanie from Cameroon, a committed research and development leader at FOREP Cameroon. FOREP Cameroon promotes the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of Cameroonians. Stephanie and FOREP focus on assisting young people in developing practical skills in research, natural resource management, community development, environmental protection, and policy formulation. Above all, they support forest-dependent communities to increase benefits from the sustainable use of natural resources. Some duties Stephanie conducts are project planning and implementation, research, data gathering, community mobilization, facilitating village meetings, community training, and workshops.

Due to Stephanie’s motivation to learn, her professional work experience, and the mentality as an achiever, she managed to establish a partnership between FOREP and Pan African Centre for Climate (PACC) Policy, Ghana. PACC strives for a clean and safe environment in Africa. In FOREP, Stephanie leads small teams in field research and works with youth and kids on environmental programs in primary and secondary schools. Besides FOREP, she anchors an environmental radio program (e.g., “Shaping Women’s Role in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation”). Her commitment to all her work has resulted in earning the Young African Leadership Initiative for Stephanie. She has worked on three conservation projects in roughly 50 rural communities, spoke at various events and conferences, and published a series of scholarly articles on natural resource management issues.

Stephanie wants to commit to sustainable natural resource management and advocate for responsible decisions. She envisions doing this by researching sustainability and climate topics and creating more innovative environmental management strategies to implement in Cameroon. With more studies, she will be well-equipped to reform policies together with other conservation organizations in the future. The JWHi-grant supports Stephanie with tuition fees, research work, and other academic necessities. She will be able to finish her second year of her Master’s on Sustainable Natural Resource Management and Environmental Protection. Also, Stephanie is researching the importance of women’s participation in decision-making towards issues of REDD+ and Climate Change in Cameroon. The intent is to disseminate the results of the research in national stakeholder meetings for recommendations towards policy formulation in Cameroon. Publish & spread the results to further gender inclusion campaigns and sensitization amongst local chiefs and authorities.