Minnesota Cameroon Community (MINCAM)

MINCAM is an acronym for Minnesota Cameroon Community. The Minnesota Cameroon Community brings together Cameroonians, people of Cameroon origin, and friends and families of everyone interested in the Cameroons and its peoples. We are a community-based organization focused on helping make the world around us here in Minnesota, a better and happier place. Critical to this mission is our community center that provides a home away from home to the more than 5,000 Minnesotans of Cameroon heritage living across the state. With the help of our volunteer staff, we organize fundraisers, exciting community-building events, and breath-taking cultural performances that are a replica of our multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic backgrounds.

With the acquisition of a Community Center, we are striving to:

• Use our rich cultural heritage to build a home away from home where all are welcomed, our unique differences celebrated, and lives are improved through the rebuilding of the community spirit
• Enrich this society that is now home to us, with our philosophy of "ujamaa", Swahili for 'extended family', 'brotherhood' or 'sisterhood'; as a guiding principle, it asserts that a person becomes a person through his/her positive relationship with other people or the community. Bringing "others" together and eliminating suspicion or fear in "others" that we either know or understand, we believe is the surest way to foster cohesion, love, empathy, and service.
• Celebrate our culture, create educational opportunities to enlighten our children and the greater community of who we are as people, our history, traditional belief system, and more.