Mikias update.

Mikias Dejene is one of the Ethiopian children  we have brought over to be operated by Dr.Sanpera. He spent more than a year here and he needed many operations till his arm, and life was saved. During that time he lived with a few wonderful and generous families who took him in as one of their own. The Baleares International College kindly had him, free of charge, as a student at the school , where he made many friends and kept up with his academic obligations.  Since his return to Ethiopia Mikias has been going to one of the best schools in Addis Ababa thanks to the students, their parents and the staff from the Baleares International College  who fund his schooling.
Here are his last term reports.

Thank you all for your help.
A better world is possible.

CHAPTER 5. FITAWARARI SCHOOL

CHAPTER 5. FITAWARARI SCHOOL, AKAKI, ETHIOPIA

At this school we have been running a dining room since 2010 for 174 primary children selected from amongst the poorest, orphans or those with HIV.  
These children have breakfast and lunch, just as we provide breakfast for the 290 pre-school children. Breakfast for all the children is made up of bread and milk. 

We have kept the dining room going this summer. Unfortunately due to some irregularities with the accounts at the present time we have had to stop sending the money we had been sending since our last visit. We hope to resume this in September when the accounts are sorted out. 

Photos: some of the children who attend the summer dining room

CHAPTER 4 : BIRU TESFA

BIRU TESFA, PRESCHOOL BUILDING

At the end of 2010, as part of our "Schools in Akaki" project we started providing breakfast of bread and milk to 190 infant pupils aged 3 to 7, which we continue to do throughout the summer to ensure the children are better fed (our summer is their cold and wet season).
We had a meeting with the management and requested them to give us better information on the accounts. We believe that this has been a case of neglect and slackness rather than bad intention, in addition they were buying the milk from small local farmers to save money but the farmers didn’t always provide the right amount and they kept changing the price. From now on they will buy the milk from the local dairy cooperative which will mean better quality and control of the milk. 
As far as everything else is concened the Biru school is like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona – we’d never get round to finishing the repair works to the building. There is a complete lack of maintenance and lots of neglect even though some of things could be sorted out easily. But we can’t assume responsibility for everything so we will concentrate on the breakfasts and paying the wages of the kitchen staff.

CHAPTER 3. ABUGIDA SCHOOL, AKAKI

One chapter doesn't do justice to Abugida, it deserves a whole TV series. 

For those who are not familiar with the story, here is a quick summary. 

We arrived in Abugida in the year 2007, (we will soon be starting the 6th school year). At the time it was a small school with around 40 children and very few teachers because the Edir (the neighbourhood association which managed the school) were paying them very low salaries, and they still charged for children to attend, it wasn't a charitable organisation. Many of the children had left because their parents didn't want them sharing a school with HIV positive children. Over the years we have managed to break down this barrier and we have integrated children with HIV simply by raising the standard of living for everyone and now they all want their children to attend Abugida, without being at all bothered about them mixing with other children carrying the virus. We have encouraged parents and staff to break the taboo surrounding this disease.

The first thing we did when we went to Abugida was build a provisional kitchen so we could start feeding the children. We firmly believe that schools in Africa should start with a dining room. Many of the children ate virtually nothing all day and they carried empty bags to school. Afterwards we built the current kitchen. 

We extended and renovated practically the whole school, including the roof. We built the outdoor dining area, the new classrooms and the nursery. We installed the water tank and made a room underneath to accommodate volunteer helpers (if there are too many of them to fit into the living quarters for volunteers) as well as abused women who can shelter there on a temporary basis whilst their children are at school and to whom we give interest free credit to help them start a new life away from their abusers. 

We increased the intake of children from the very first year - there are presently around 200 - and for the last 3 years we have been admitting children aged 1 and 2. There is nowhere quite like it in the entire subcity of Akaki Kaliti or even in the whole of Addis.

We would even go as far as saying the entire country because there are no schools in Ethiopia, public or private, with dining rooms for the children. There are many schools subsidized by charities but their projects do not normally include dining room facilities. Some children take a packed lunch from home but the ones who don't have anything don't eat anything. There are no nursery schools for 1 and 2 year olds either, not like the ones here in Spain. The rich employ nannies and the poor have nothing. Mothers with babies find it very difficult to work and because there are so many single mothers, many children end up being abandoned due to poverty. 

This is what we fight for at Mediterránea; to prevent children being abandoned through poverty - as much as we possibly can within our capabilities - and because children have the right to eat and be happy wherever they are in the world. 

We practise solidarity, not charity. For us it's just a question of justice. Children are the future of their countries and even though it may seem such a small scale, it is obvious that a baby who is well fed and receives stimulation from the age of one will have a better brain.

Abugida is unique because it's a paradise for society's poorest families, and the nursery is even more unique because it's a beautiful place, the children are well looked after, we integrate disabled and special needs children (no other place does this) and a huge amount of work has gone into raising the standards of education as well as the infrastructure and facilities. For more than 4 years we have been providing literacy classes to adult women and some men, and we have celebrated various graduations of pupils who have left the school much better equipped to face the hardships of daily life. 

But this idyllic school, and for precisely this reason, because it's so ideal and is destined for the poorest people, has been the object of greed by unscrupulous people on successive occasions.   

Every now and then we have to prune the rotten branches and every now and then we are also surprised at how easily other branches go rotten. From our first representative to the last but one, they have all wanted to take their share of the school, in one way or another, some of them being tainted by their greed in really surrealistic ways. 

We have always made the rotten branches grow healthily again. Using our emergency fund to replace the money stolen from the poor with no qualms whatsoever. We carry out extensive follow-ups and we now have plenty of experience so we know exactly when things start to turn sour. 

If Abugida was a school made out of logs or mud and didn't have a monthly budget of more than 6000 euros, it wouldn't be quite so well known. We now have the full support of the "woreda" local district but because of vested interests, the constant lies and deceit and situation continues to be complicated to this day. And we've been like this for 6 years. And all of us here at Mediterránea are planning on keeping things going as long as we possibly can, because the best incentive to carry on fighting is to see the children growing strong and happy, children who would otherwise be condemned to a life of being "nobodies" and their families predestined to break up. 

2/ SOCIAL CENTRE FOR THE ELDERLY IN THE RAILWAY QUARTER

The centre was offically opened in May this year. The results are not as we had anticipated, not through lack of users but because the leaders of the local Edir which runs the centre have not made any effort to get it up and running. They were also annoyed because last year some Mediterránea volunteers - at their own accord and risk and without consulting us or considering the expenses involved - started to make them ridiculous promises including repair work at some of the pensioner's  houses.

We take this opportunity to inform all our future volunteers that they must never make any promises because they create false expectations and then we end up having to take responsibility for the consequences.
We have seen that the only way to get the centre up and running is to employ somebody to liven things up so we are employing a lady to open and close the place each day and who seems to have the resources and willingness to make it work. Let's see what happens.

We had a meeting with the 15 elderly people we sponsor and gave them their monthly allowance. We are happy to be able to say that they are all alive and in relatively good health at the moment.

REPORT OF THE VISIT IN CHAPTERS: 1/ SEBETA BLIND CHILDREN’S SCHOOL AND MESSI ROOM.

We can emphatically and happily state that the teachers employed for the Messi are wonderful.
They themselves – there is nobody supervising them – open the doors to the Messi room and the gym for the 100 children who have spent their summer there as they had nowhere else to go.

Before the Messi room was set up these children would vegetate in their homes or neighbourhood whereas now they take turns to attend the stimulative workshop and gym activities in the mornings and afternoons from Monday to Friday and on Saturday mornings.

Kefale, Abdeta, Adugna and Kidist interact with the children in a way that is so moving to watch, because we know that unfortunately this is not normally the case in Ethiopia, especially when working with disabled children.

Every day a little boy of 6 with visual, motor and psychic disability attends the Messi. He plays and is happy there. We give his mother financial help so that she can take a few hours off work in order to take her son to the Messi.

All the children in the Messi room are happy and the best thing of all is that their teachers are happy with them. The four of them are always smiling. If only we could export them from the Messi and take them to all the schools for blind children, to all the schools in the country.

Thanks to Abdeta, Kefale, Kidist and Adugna for being as they are.
You are the pride of your profession.
They are in the photo with Laura, Cristina and Bea, who visited the Messi to supervise very recently, and they came away very pleased with what they saw, just as we did.