Started in 1996, the organisation became legalized in 2000. Reach Out was founded by a group of medical doctors, gender specialists, social workers, nurses, community relay agents and agronomists who were concerned with the plight of the rural people, especially those in hard-to-reach areas and those rendered vulnerable. These include, but are not limited to minority groups such as widows, displaced women and their families, school drop-outs, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) as well as HIV and AIDS infected and affected persons who are all main beneficiaries of Reach Out’s programs.

The organisation was born in response to the wide-spread HIV epidemic in Fako district, particularly among rural communities which were left unattended. The pioneer group of social workers, agricultural experts, doctors and nurses and other well-wishers decided to focus on serving the rural populations with information about the virus and on how to build up immune systems with natural recipes.

They quickly became interested on not only serving those rendered vulnerable, but advocating for them and raised our voice to denounce the injustices people living with HIV were suffering in our Country. They’ve never stopped advocating since then. Experiencing that the HIV pandemic was unevenly affecting women, with other specific challenges such as gender-based violence, gender inequality, property expropriation and little access to leadership positions, the organisation broadened its focus and included aspects of Gender, human rights and governance. This saw the birth of the second department within the organisation – Gender and Capacity Building which was later renamed Human Rights and Governance. In the course of carrying out activities in the Human Rights and Governance Department, we realised that our sensitisation and capacity building efforts required a third leg for the economic empowerment of the most marginalized groups especially women and girls. Thus, the Economic Security Department was born to take care of the economic empowerment of women and underprivileged groups. Today these three departments have separate focus on interconnected issues, and work in synergy to bring the best impact to communities all over Cameroon, Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and North-Eastern Nigeria.