Foyer de l’Esperance

Imagine being a young girl and living on the streets in a third world country surviving by your wits and being forced to give your body in order to have a safe place to sleep. This is the plight for many girls around the world.

Since 2017, Incarnation Lutheran Church has partnered with the religious congregation of Our Lady of Compassion (Toulouse), under the direction of a Jesuit priest in Cameroon, at Le Foyer de l’Esperance in Yaounde, Cameroon to change the plight of street girls. At Le Foyer de l’Esperance, the girls have an opportunity to learn personal and vocational skills, and receive schooling, tutoring and counseling sessions. The program currently consists of a day program and has recently expanded to an overnight program so that a few girls have a safe place to sleep at night in the small facility currently being used instead of sleeping on the streets.

The program is run by nuns from the congregation of Our Lady of Compassion and a worker supported by Incarnation. Sophie Moke Meteke, a native Cameroonian Lutheran seminary student who just finished her master’s degree in theology, has worked alongside the nuns since 2019. Sophie’s monthly stipend is paid through donations to Incarnation’s Cameroon Girls fund. Joint ventures between denominations in Cameroon are unusual and this partnership is a model for interfaith ministry.

The dream has long been for a dormitory facility that can house a larger number of girls overnight and expand the day program. In May 2019 through generous donations, Incarnation was able to provide a financial gift of $4000 to Le Foyer de l’Esperance which was used to construct the safety wall around the perimeter of the property for the new facility. The wall is now up and construction on the building began in July 2021 with funding for the building coming through the donations from Spain through the Roman Catholic Church. 

Please pray for this project and prayerfully consider making a donation to support the girls and our worker, Sophie Moke Meteke.

Have questions or want more information, email us at hopecameroon@godamong.us.