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When families decide to adopt from Ethiopia, often their eyes are opened to the tremendous need there. That need is way too enormous to be addressed through adoption alone. Currently there are 4 million orphans in Ethiopia. In 2006, 732 children came to new adoptive families in the U.S. Though adoption was a great solution for those children, it is obviously not helping the vast majority of the needy people in Ethiopia.
So what can a family do? Some adoption agencies have programs that help the community from which children come. Adoption Advocates International, for example, has a sponsorship program in Nazret which allows orphan children to remain in extended family and pays for their schooling. Projects like these may not directly help your child’s family, but they do give you a chance to help the larger community.
An organization involved in helping families in Ethiopia is Grace For Children. They have an orphan sponsorship program, a day care for mothers who don’t have the benefit of extended family support, and a mother-baby wellness center.
There are other ways you can help out in Africa as well. In the past I’ve mentioned Ethiopia Reads. Ethiopia Reads was founded to provide quality reading materials in local languages, promote reading, and create libraries. You can donate to this project on their website.
Another project that caught my eye is The BoGo Light. The BoGo Light is an affordable, long lasting, solar flashlight. With each light purchased in the developed world, a second identical light will be donated to an organization that will distribute it in the developing world, including Ethiopia.
Malaria No More is an awesome site that for $10 lets you donate a bed net to someone in need in Africa.
If you would like to donate to or begin your own project to assist in Ethiopia, check out Direct Change, the website begun by John Bul Dau, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.
And finally, if the beautiful bracelets at the top of this blog caught your eye, you might want to check out the Hope Bracelet Project. Ethiopian people, with the help of US donors, are making these gorgeous bracelets. They are then being sold and the money is used to train and educate people in Ethiopia.
Do you know of ways to make a difference in Ethiopia? Let’s hear them.
Related posts:
Raising Charitable Children
Making a Difference
What do you think of World Vision? They have come in at just 13% overhead for the last three years in a row, while working in over a hundred countries. I like their child sponsorship program because it effects the whole village, and the charity gift catalog is cool. My friend asked for people to donate to it last year instead of buying her christmas gifts, and it was fun to pick out a goat or a tree or some soccer balls.
Here’s their Ethiopia page:
http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/projects.nsf/countries/ethiopia
Oh, and also:
http://www.playpumps.org
Check out Hope for Ethiopia (www.hope4ethiopia.org). It is an NGO started by two Ethiopian natives who lived for many years in NYC and recently moved back to help the orphan and blind children in the Tigrai region (northern Ethiopia).