Hello to All Followers of Mediterranea.

We’d like to tell you our plans for the coming year:

We want to dedicate ourselves more to the disabled children of Ethiopia.  It is a sector of the child population, which is incredibly vulnerable, children who have virtually no present or future.

Sami, the education delegate of the Akaki kebele (neighbourhood), who as you know is blind, is bringing blind children, who are normally shut in their homes, to school.  He also brings children with mental disability.  These are children who are permanently locked up and many times tied up in their homes because their families have to go to work and don’t have any other way of avoiding that they endanger themselves.

At the Akaki Mengist school there are only two classes for these children.  So we need to build more classrooms.  To begin with we had thought that one day we could construct a completely new school, but Akaki Mengist has offered us land to construct more classrooms for the blind and deaf children.  This option is cheaper and has the advantage that the classrooms will be in a school that is already up and running.  The physically disabled will be able to work in the vegetable garden, which will be made bigger.

We also want to fulfil another dream: the creation of a kindergarten for blind babies.  This will be at Abugida, at the entrance to the school.

We have achieved much in the four years that we have been in Ethiopia.  The challenges have been big but so have the achievements.  We want to continue doing things in Ethiopia.  The people need us and there is much more work that needs doing.  The sub city of Akaki continue proposing us more pre and infant schools but we cannot take on any of these projects if we don’t increase our number of members.  We proposed to the head of the sub city that he too becomes a member of Mediterranea… a little humour never comes over badly.

In summary, followers of Mediterranea, we start 2011 with much motivation, and don’t want to forget to say thank you for being there and thank you all for allowing us to do what are doing.  Hopefully the family of Mediterranea will continue growing and allow us to do even more.

A New Year and Life a Little Better

At last we have started to provide breakfast for the 198 children of the Biru Tesfa Primary School in Akaki, Ethiopia.  The breakfast is composed of bread, egg and milk, on other days rice and other ingredients.  This is an important contribution to the dietary needs of these children who eat nothing or very little else throughout the rest of the day.  For this reason they call our breakfast, lunch.

Next month Barry, our volunteer builder, will travel to the school.  He will produce a budget for the repairs that are needed and then start work immediately.  As you can see from the photos the children have started classes with cracks in the walls, broken windows…it is not a safe environment for them and for this reason we shall try to make repairs as soon as we can.  Mediterranea will pay for the materials and the parents will provide the manual labour.

Counting the children of Biru Tesfa, of Fitawrari and Abugida we are now feeding 686 children in Ethiopia.  For us it is not merely caring but and investment for the future.

More Glasses!

Over the Christmas holiday’s supporters of Mediterranea have delivered glasses to: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka and Guinea.  Shortly there will be a shipment to Burkina Faso.  Thank you to everyone who helped us with this programme and by doing so have helped to change the lives of all those people in all those countries who have so little.  It is incredible what can be achieved with only the smallest effort.