The Story Behind our Ethiopia Projects

Contributed by:

Norma Nashed, Director of Reaching Hearts for Kids and Airline Ambassadors Mission Coordinator

Join AAI and Reaching Hearts for Kids, as they partner to send teams on mission trips to Ethiopia!

Reaching Hearts for Kids built a new home for 38 children without parents in Ambo, 135km west of Addis.  The work must continue...Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in Africa, millions of children are left without parents due to HIV/AIDS, and many more millions are expected to starve this year.

According to United Nations statistics on the food situation in Ethiopia, 4.5 million people will starve this year, many of whom are children.  So agriculture is an essential goal for our children for food security and sustainability of our projects. 

The children at the New Hope Center are sponsored by Reaching Hearts for Kids and range in age from 4-13.  Originally 45 children were housed in a three-bedroom home with no tap water.  Now, we have 37 children.  Eight were returned to extended family members.

When I first visited, the only place the children had to play was a mud courtyard which served as a bathing area, too.  I was shocked to see the children bathe.  They ALL just stripped their clothes and one child held a hose to wash them with cold water and very little soap.  The children were shivering from the cold.   The children had torn clothes and torn blankets, sheets and towels.  They had never seen tooth brushes before and didn’t know what to do with them.  They had one hair brush for all the children. 

In the new home, children have showers and bathrooms and they have electricwater heaters so they don’t have to shiver from the cold water.  Our mission group brought clothes, school supplies and crafts and bought for them shoes locally.  The youth in our group conducted evening vacation Bible schools.

The first time I visited Ethiopia was in June 2007 when we had a team of 31 volunteers from the U.S. and Europe, including 3 dentists (right) from Maryland, Virginia and California who worked on extracting and cleaning teeth, even on patients with HIV/AIDS.

The rest of the group (29) worked on the construction of the home (left) as the dental team worked at the local Ambo Hospital that had no tap water in the rooms or clinic.  

When we arrived in Addis we immediately went to see the children in Ambo.   The children met us singing a song in broken English over and over again:  "Welcome our mothers, welcome our fathers.  We all love you and are happy to see you".  I sobbed and wiped my tears.  These children had nothing.  They had no parents.  Nothing.  Yet, they were content, thankful and happy.

To the right, 31 volunteers at the steps of Ambo Hotel and to the left they are dining at the same hotel.

The kitchen in the old home consisted of a shack with two cooking pots that were placed on two stones.  Wooden sticks and dried branches were used as fire for cooking.  Most of the children had no shoes, but some had slippers to wear to school.

The school had no water, so we paid $3,000 for pipes from the municipality so the children can have water.  The school had no desks or blackboards and another $3,000 supplied that.  We also partnered with another organization in Germany to buy a school bus for the poor children in the community.  We paid teachers and staff for the school and home, plus food, clothing.  

The school had only four latrines that were falling apart and the children were endangered as the two wooden boards were not stable -- sliding mud around them.  One Korean manager in the area saw the need and built six sturdy latrines with cement and blocks as shown in the photo on the left.    

Children in their new home in                                                                                              75 school children with Norma

Ambo, April 2008.                                                                                                                             Ambo, April 2008

Interacting with Norma after story telling

and teaching them to sing.                                                                                    

This photo shows Toni Davis, one of our volunteers, crying as she saw Pachu, the girl she sponsors for the first time.  Pachu’s parents died of HIV/AIDS and she had no one to care for her.  She was stolen from the street and was sold as a slave to an old lady far away from her area, who happened to live in Ambo, where we have our home.  The woman heard about New Hope Center and came to beg for money to feed Pachu.  The old woman treated Pachu like a maid and made her work hard.  When the director saw the old woman he called the police and they took the old woman away and kept Pachu in the home.  Now, she is safe, happy, cared for and loved.

Lizzie Johnson and another college student arrived in Ethiopia in August 2008. They lived in the new home with the children. The young women tutored the children in English and trained them in hygiene, health, and other essential needs. 

Lizzie Johnson,

a college student from Oregon                                                                                           Children learn work ethics and

responsibility in the home. 

They are learning to plant fruit trees and to water them

Asafu is a 13-year old girl Norma found in Ambo in front of her Igloo home where she lived alone for three years after both parents died of HIV/AIDS.  Her brother was in our home and she would come every day to see her brother and wished she could have a bed and food like him.  When Norma heard Asafu's story, she asked Asafu to take her to see her home.  There was no way Norma could have prepared herself to grasp how a beautiful young girl like her could stand this life.  Immediately she took her to the new Ambo home and asked the head mother (third from left) to treat her well and allow her to study.  Norma also gave the mother money to buy her new clothes, shoes, and a jacket.  Left:  Asafu before, alone and living in her Igloo Home.  Right:  Asafu after she moved to the home in Ambo, happy and smiling and wearing her new clothes.  She goes to school and if she does well, we will send her to college so she can become a leader in her community and give back and help other children.

Ethiopian little girls and Ethiopian woman work harder than men.  Norma met a six-year old little girl in December 2007 and watched her dig in the field all day, nonstop. When asked if she wanted to go to school, the girl smiled and said: “ Yes I want to learn to read and write.” 

I promised this young lady that we will take her in our school since she works in the field next to our home.  This girl would spend the rest of her life digging without the school.  Reaching Hearts for Kids, in partnership with Airline Ambassadors, will give this child and many other marginalized children a chance to have hope and a future. 

Thank you for helping us do that.

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