History
Strategic Humanitarian Services (SHUMAS), started as an informal initiative in 1993 by Mr Ndzerem Stephen Njodzeka, (Mformi) originally a jurist, who felt that his potentials could not be fully exploited in that domain and as such decided to switch to community development. A profession he felt could better enable him to contribute to improve lives and enable people to exploit their full potentials, which had been his childhood vision that continuously rang a bell in his mind.
He started by creating a company known as Hill-man Humanitarian Services with a charity attached to it called Hill-man Charity. For a period of 5 years, a portion of the profits from the company were used for the activities of Hill-man Charity, helping to sponsor disadvantaged and vulnerable children, who very often had been pushed to premature adulthood.
In 1997 the Charity was registered as an Association in Cameroon, under Registration Number 1082/E.29/1111/VI.7/APPB and the name changed from Hill-man Humanitarian Services to Strategic Humanitarian Services (SHUMAS).
As an association, the activities were formalized and was transformed now from a purely social welfare program to a development-oriented organization with many axes of intervention (Agriculture, Environment, Women empowerment, Education, Social Welfare, Health, Water and Sanitation).
Within the framework of the new status and its exigencies, SHUMAS started with the identification of target communities and stakeholders. This gave her a chance to create synergies and platforms through which she identified the needs of the targeted population and possible interventions in a more sustainable manner.
After the needs identification, SHUMAS resorted to prioritization. Top on the list of priority needs were the negative impact of the indiscriminate planting of Eucalyptus on water catchments and arable land, the vicious cycle of poverty enveloping poor peasant farmers and their families and wide spread poor educational infrastructure, hampering effective and efficient studies, the plight of people with disability, the poor situation of rural women irrespective of their potentials, the limited access to basic facilities in poor peasant communities such as potable water and health facilities.
SHUMAS then started identifying possible partners who could collaborate in finding lasting solutions.
After successfully building collaboration with partners and successfully implementing many community development projects (Agriculture, Environment, Women empowerment, Education, Social Welfare, Health, Water and Sanitation) all over the 10 Regions of Cameroon, the Government of Cameroon through the then Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, (MINADT) granted SHUMAS the status of a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) as per decree number 00000196/A/MINATD/SG/DAP/SDLP/SONG.
In 2013, SHUMAS gained special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social council (ECOSOC) and equally became a member of the NGO Committee on Social Development with the UN since the 4th of February 2016.
At the moment SHUMAS has applied to become a public utility with files already at the Presidency waiting for the decision of the Head of State.
SHUMAS has been fully involved in Humanitarian activities since 2013 in the Far-North Region responding to the Boko-Haram insurgencies and the onset of the Anglophone crisis in the North-West and South-West Regions of Cameroon. We are involved in Food security/livelihood, WASH, Protection, Shelter/NFIs, Health, Nutrition, and Education in Emergency.