Ethiopia Reads

Last night Jeremy and the nursing students arrived! Today we met with Gebregeorgis Yohannes, founder of non-profit organization "Ethiopia Reads." (www.ethiopiareads.org). This is an incredible organization that supplies school and independent libraries around the country from donor support. Yohannes is a very intelligent, energetic and inspirational individual who grew up here in Ethiopia and has a very interesting life story. (Perhaps for another blog posting...) Prior to this organization, virtually no books existed for children to read in their native language, Amharic. Now, thanks to Yohannes, there are hundreds of books available for various age groups in various languages (Amharic, Oromia, English, French, German, etc.) This organization has created 43 school-based libraries around Ethiopia with a start-up cost of $10,000 USD per library. There are no maintenance costs as the libraries are maintained by school staff. Unfortunately the organization has been strongly affected by the US economy and the disaster relief work in Haiti. The largest branch here in Addis was recently shut down in January. To learn how you can help, check out the website and talk to me.