Rotary reaches out orphanage centers

The Rotary club of Addis Ababa West, one of the six Rotary clubs in Ethiopia , donated books to two orphanages, Artist for Charity Children's Home and Action for Female Education, on November 10, 2006. The books were obtained from the Brother's Brother Foundation, Petersburg Pennsylvania .

Dr Tadesse Alemu, coordinator of the book donation and member of the Rotary Club of Bole speaking at the donation ceremony said that books worth 587,000 dollars so far have been distributed to the six rotary clubs in Ethiopia to share out among their projects. From February to May, 2006, 39 thousand books have been imported from its source. On average more than 20 schools are included in the list to benefit from the donation.

“If we take Rotary club of Addis Ababa West, they have distributed their share to five schools (Atse Tewodros,Beatemengest,Menjar Samasenbet,Butagera,Shenkora) including the two orphanage centers. Additionally, three more schools will benefit from the donation in the coming week.”

“Since 1998 G.C Brother's Brother Foundation has been a great help for us in providing books (brand new books collected from different publishers) that are essential for 3 rd world countries. Shipment expenses of the imported books were covered by USAID and rotary clubs in USA . Local expenses are usually covered by Rotary clubs in Ethiopia . Coordinating these projects was done by ‘Lewut' Rotaract clubs sponsored by their mother club, Rotary club of Addis Ababa West.”

He further stated that due to pricey delivery expenses, the donors cannot provide door to door service from the source to its final destination. “At times, due to various reasons, the imported books stay for over a month once reaching Djibouti , which incurs additional demurrage fee. And the cost of transportation from Djibouti to Ethiopia equals the shipment fees from USA to Ethiopia . Finding storages once in Ethiopia is also very difficult. This is a problem for us all the time,” he said, but nothing matches the pleasure of seeing young children in a country with low literacy rate benefit from it.

Mr. Alan A. Bromhead, president of the Rotary Club of Addis Ababa West, at the book donation ceremony to the centers, extended his appreciation to the Rotaracters (young Rotarians) for their unfolding support in organizing such assignments and promised to continue encouraging such project for the future.

The Artist for Charity Children's Home was first established by two young artists, Suleiman Shifaw and Abezash Tamerat who came from Atlanta , USA . The children's home comprises of 14 HIV positive orphans within the age group of 8 to 15. “The children living here do not have any support and most of them have no access to humanitarian NGOs assistance. We have been collecting funds from various sources and so far we got 20 thousand dollars which we are using for their medication and house rent.”

“Artist For Charity Children's Home was first founded four years ago with a different aim but considering the poor conditions of the children we reformed the idea and stared to help the orphanages from March 2006 onwards,” they added

The second recipient of the books donation, Action for Female Education is a basic education center initiated by four teachers in 2003. The center provides non-formal education which enables students to become qualified to join any government school starting from 3 rd grade. “The center used to accommodate about 60 students. But following the May 15, 2005 election, the school compound owned by the Kebele 10 was repossessed for the use of soldiers. We have now been allotted another compound inside the Kebele where we have turned containers into classrooms and enrolled 42 students. The remaining students we had were accepted at various government schools to continue their schooling,” said Wo Mehiret Banteyewalu, Director of the center.

The donation grew into a vivid ceremony when the children performed their rehearsed song and read a letter to express their heartfelt gratitude to the donors and attendants.