About the Founder
Birth and Childhood Life
By name, the founder of HELP Foundation is NKENGACHA Marcellous AGENDIA. He was born into a peasant monogamous (but later) polygamous family by AGENDIA and BELLEFEH - a family blessed by God to do charity. He grew up in the neighborhood of a small village called Nveh, where he went to primary, secondary and high schools (G.S. Nchenfem, GBHS Fontem and Seat of Wisdom College respectively). Nkengacha grew up working in the farm alongside his many brothers, sisters and strangers who were being offered schooling, health, housing assistance by his poor parents with the little they were blessed with.
Tertiary Studies and Work
The founder and CEO of HELP Foundation study Medical Laboratory Sciences at the university of Buea, where he graduated as a Medical Laboratory Scientist (Bachelor). He did community service with the South West School health service, and was later employed at MAPAC Laboratory, where he worked in Kumba and Douala as the Laboratory Director for 2 years. He was later in 2009 employed be the Cameroon government and has since then worked as the Chief laboratory Scientist at the Ministry of Pubic Health, working at Sangmelima District Hospital. His longevity in service, research and interaction with other medical professionals gave him a deeper insight into disease management.
From the Lab to the Community
After about 9 years of studies (around 2016), Nkengacha became more uncomfortable receiving more and more patients for diagnoses, most of whom were coming back 3 to 4 times a month for the same problems. Worst of all, were babies and children, women, the vulnerable and the less privileged who had basically nothing to cover their bills. Emergencies like transfusions in an area without a blood bank were very difficult to manage. Nkengacha would often offer a short term and immediate help by either facilitating blood donation from donors and/or paying of some bills. This was never enough. He needed to educate the communities on measures to better handle these diseases which were quite preventable. He started going out into he communities on a regular basis for health educational talks with the local populations.
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He did more online research and discussed with doctors to get more information to help the people. He got his first donation of community health educational books from Hesperian Health Guides, and got some online training for the management of diabetes and hypertension, which are quite preventable and reversible from Dr. Jason Fung, a Canadian based Nephrologist with an outstanding record in diabetic management. However, all these weren't enough as he needed a public health approach to population/patient health management.
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In 2018, he was offered admission at a South American based university, Texila American University, where he studied public health. The studies gave me more zeal to serve the populations in the areas of disease management through health education/promotion - which includes, humanitarian relief/assistance, health screening campaigns, vaccination campaigns, etc.
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Meeting a few friends and colleagues they were receptive and that is how all ideas were packaged under HELP Foundation on August 2019 and the organization was officially approved for functioning. The vision of the foundation is to empower people living in our communities to have full control over their health and over disease-related determinants, rather than the other way round. Read more about the organization.