ANSA International Program Blog

A brief overview of Ethiopia: Commonly considered the birthplace of coffee.  Nearly twice the size of Texas with three times the population (78 million).  Average life span: 49 years.  Literacy rate: 40%.  Landlocked country with 80% of the workforce in agriculture and 90% of the country suffering from chronic severe droughts.  Commercial economy is primarily individual street marketing.  Amazing fresh spices, including one that sounds like a double beer order - berbere, and a crazy head spinning dance that defies the principles of human kinetics (as seen in the second woman's kneeling head spin in this youtube video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V_Io9f9GQc 

In short, it's a country with a lot of wonderful people, fascinating lively culture and a severe lack of infrastructural capacity and technical skillsets.  An overwhelming number of the wonderful people are in a chronic state of poverty and poor health.

It's no surprise, then, that walking out of the international arrivals area at Addis Ababa's Bole International Airport, Kevin Winge, Executive Director of Open Arms of Minnesota, Jane Letourneau, Open Arms volunteer extraordinaire, and I passed numerous passenger pick-up signs reading, "Clinton Foundation", "Peace Corps", "USAID Project", etc..  They were, literally, signs of what we were about to see more of than injera and coffee: U.S. aid.

Kevin, Jane and I had been invited to Ethiopia by the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) to assess possible models for health-based food and nutrition programs using the vast availability of community volunteers.  Our NASTAD hosts Felipe (with hat) and Workneh arranged a terrific week of orientation, meetings and tours to give us an overview of the country's history, culture, capabilities and challenges.  Workneh also introduced us to the confident Ethiopian man's cool dance style -- something he could make a mint from with a training video for American men. 

In Ethiopia, a state's Regional Health Bureau (RHB) directs foreign aid resources primarily through regional HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Offices (HAPCOs), which work with district or neighborhood-based Kebelehs.  Both HAPCOs and Kebelehs work with large aid organizations to distribute rations provided primarily the World Food Program.  Like most other places in the world, the food crisis has meant difficult cutbacks in WFP's operations in Addis and Oromia, Ethiopia's central region where NASTAD partners are located.

Key to our visit was a meeting with 14 leaders representing a collective of iddirs - community groups that originated as burial societies but over time have become active in most aspects of daily community life, including education, development and support for those most in need.  The iddirs representated a ready, willing and large population of volunteer leaders and residents eager to be involved in care for their own communities.   The day before this meeting we had toured an urban gardens project of the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia where residents collectively grow enough food for consumption and market.  The iddir leaders agreed that a similar program would be ideal for their local communities, and NASTAD received support from Ato Shallo, Oromia's RHB director (pictured, with Kevin Winge, Workneh, me and Felipe), to move forward with plans to develop such a project.  Done well, there is now the potential to develop a sustainable food and nutrition option in central Ethiopia that not only allows the community to care for each other, it will depend on it.  And in the words of one of the iddirs, "We have counted on charity for so long that today we are not strong.  We need to be able to rely on each other if we want to live stronger - and longer." 

 Indeed, that strengthens all of us, and we hope we're able to help make that possible.

Peace to all...Mary