Grassroots Development and Empowerment Action Platform (GDEAP) began as a concept in August 2008.It was an idea pioneered by Luke Nchichupa. As a student leader of his community, with strong views on humans rights activism, youth advocacy, community development and transparency since 2004, the idea to create GDEAP was born after a number of considerations amongst them students contributions in community development, the existing circumstances involving management, participation and realization of community projects in his locality and its environs and the future of young people in leadership. Influenced by these existing situations, Luke felt the need to create a framework through which everyone at community levels can contribute constructively in different ways.

GDEAP is an organization that works with grassroots communities and encourages and enable communities to build a constructive structure through which everyone can participate in community development including the elderly. To achieve this, all sections of the population have to be involved. To be involved, you need to be informed, empowered, and when empowered, you must take action to bring about meaningful change in grassroots development. Since coming into existence, GDEAP worked on a limited scale on youth and education projects in different parts of Cameroon.

For the last five years GDEAP has engaged itself with different actors on the ground and in number of ways has undertaken a number of youth led projects to help improve communities in Cameroon. In the coming GDEAP’s will be working with women, youth, girls and elderly targeting different aspects all framed up in GDEAP’s "VISION 2025 Package" .

GDEAP has completed a number of projects including those that dealt with youth empowerment, education and public accountability. We are an organization that is led by the youth and this is reason enough for us to place a high value on the lives of fellow youths. Our main goal for the youths is to ensure that the youth of tomorrow become confident and innovative, caring, self-reliant, transparent and democratic and above all maintain the tenets of human rights.

Grassroots Development and Empowerment Action Platform has carried out a number of youth empowerment projects including:

• Youths and Self Reliance in Community Building (maintaining farm to market roads project -2008).

• Using Sports as a medium for leadership building in grassroots youths (cultural and football competition, GDEAP sponsor 2009-2010.

• Developing creative and transformative writing skills in grassroots youths (creation of free educational materials for primary education-Yaoundé).

GDEAP has also led the way in public accountability. Our Community Accountability Campaign Project made full use of social media to inform, empower and create awareness amongst community youths to speak up, and if possible hold community leaders accountable for the management of community funds. In addition, we have been working and will continue to work in areas of community governance by educating the youths on good leadership and best community administrative practices.

Within the next coming years GDEAP will continue to work on the Community Accountability Campaign Project, decentralization of community development projects, and futuristic leadership. Within these fields, we hope to break down the ideas and represent them within smaller programs for easy realization. Our vision is to encourage the underprivileged groups in our country to become more aware of their rights and to take part in the decision making process. We encourage these groups to have the same rights to resources and benefits as do the more privileged and we also encourage them to become more self-reliant. If GDEAP receives proper opportunities and resources it is also ready to expand its operations throughout the country and perhaps even globally.