On February 4, 2014, U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission, Gregory Thome, joined Yaounde Pilot Linguistic Center Director, Guillaume Tchebetchou, to hand out award certificates to forty young Cameroonians selected to participate in the English Access Micro scholarship Program in Yaounde.

After thanking the Yaounde Pilot Center for their partnership in implementing the Access program, Mr. Gregory Thome urged participants to take their Access program very seriously.

“The road to English proficiency may seem long and exhausting, but the rewards are great,” he told them.

Sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, the English Access Microscholarship Program provides two years of English language instruction to qualified students between the ages of 14-20 and from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The ultimate goal of the program is to increase the student’s opportunities in the formal economy to make them more competitive for higher education awards and scholarships in the United States and in other countries where English is the medium of education.