Good news, even if it is late in coming, is still good news. The Maru-Chebot First Cycle Elementary School in the Berga wetland area of Ethiopia is expanding its classroom space with a new building as you can see in this progressive triptych. The authorities are planning to add a grade level a year starting with 5th this year and going up to 8th. As we must remind ourselves, these simple additions will make a world of difference in the lives of the kids, the little girls especially. The walk to the nearest school with the higher grades is 5km, a distance tantalizingly close but out of reach for many and again, for many of the girls. So many good things come with the education of young girls and women, a set of correlations that others have firmly established through the heart-wrenching stories of individual girls or through the coldly analytical quantitative analysis. Both ways to tell the story can be effective, often to different audiences, and both are necessary. In this case, we hope to see it for a group of kids whose faces have shown through on these pages time and time again.
As I wrote last fall, it was some of our support that directly helped make this building take shape. Modest funds earlier this year went directly to purchased the corrugated steel sheets that constitute the roof. Some subsequent support, just a few hundreds of dollars from some who wanted to advance their donations, went over this fall to help outfit the new building with windows.
At the same time, Geremew highlights continuing challenges for different aspects of this integrated development program. The health extension workers, two women with one year of training apiece, have knowledge but little in the way of supplies to dispense to the needy population. When I visited in November 2007, their one room was stocked with a range of supplies provided by UNICEF. No longer. Geremew writes that they are mostly without health commodities and supplies to give out. I’ve talked to some good friends in Ethiopia who work in health services and we are hoping to find some stop gap assistance. But stock outs as they call them continue to be a long term challenge.
2 comments:
Geoff-
We are so happy to see that the addition to the school is taking shape but heart broken that the health workers find their supplies so lacking. Is this a case of simple necessities that we all have in our medicine cabinets or are they looking for more advanced medicines and supplies? Is it even possible to take up a collection of the items we all have lying around and then ship them over there or is it another case of money is better suited for this purpose as they can purchase those supplies locally if they just had the money?
It's heartbreaking to be sitting on my couch, enjoying relative plenty, when so many go without so much. Would this be a instance where something like a donation to Kiva could come to their aid?
Thanks Kiwanji for the comment. It is basic stuff they are running out of. Some of it is immunizations, vitamin supplements, basic medicines, and then other that are needed on an ongoing basis such as contraceptives (especially ones for women). Money is definitely the option for this kind of thing unfortunately.
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