ethiopian education foundation

eef News Archives

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- Sunday, March 31st, 2013
- Meet Miriam Rodriguez Marquez, the latest addition to our team.
  
  Miriam will be looking after our girls and many other aspects of our operation in Addis Ababa.
  
  Miriam has a degree in Air Transport Management and over 10 years experience in different roles in commercial aviation in both the UK and the US. She has just left Washington DC where she was working for British Airways and also volunteering for the American Red Cross in their Disaster Response Team. Her aim is to apply her skills and experience acquired in the corporate sector to maximize the resources available and ensure the most efficient running of the hostel. She is very keen to create a positive atmosphere for the students in order to help them achieve their potential and the best possible results. It is also her aim to attract quality volunteers that can bring valuable skills and knowledge to enrich the students overall experience of the programme.
  
  Welcome Miriam!
- Future Choices Programme – Law
- Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
- From our students’ message board:
  
  The Future Choices Programme is aimed at providing students with information, advice and guidance about different career paths and higher education choices.
  
  It will involve series of guest speakers from different industries who will talk to students about future options within those industries. Students will have the opportunity to raise questions and discuss any queries that they have.
  
  The job someone has impacts significantly on their life. There are many things to think about when thinking about a career that is right for you for example: what you find interesting, what you tasks you enjoy doing day to day, what structure or environment you like working in.
  
  There will be talks over the coming months focusing on different industries, you might find some interesting information about careers you haven’t considered so think about coming to a selection of talks.
  
  If you want to find out about a specific industry please speak to Katia about it and she will try to find a professional from that industry to come in to talk to you.
  
  The objective of the “Law” session was to raise student’s awareness of what options there are in the legal sector, what different career paths people can take who study law as well as taking a look at what work life might be like for people who choose this careers in this sector.
  
  Guest Speaker – Zecharias Fassil – (LLM & PhD Candidate & Associate Fellow of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law) provided information, advice and guidance to students on careers and future choices in the legal sector.
  
  Zech lectures at the University of Addis Ababa and has a good knowledge of the legal sector and of what study and career options there are in law. One of the project’s Zech is working on is about issues of Child Rights in Ethiopia (this is like human rights for children), and is leading how Ethiopia develops its approach to law in relation to the rights of children.
- Annual EEF Summary
- Friday, October 19th, 2012
- It is time for our annual update, so here is what we have been doing and achieved over the last few months.
  
  1) 22 students successfully graduated from High School in June 2012 and officially completed the eef programme. All 22 students have gained a place at university. All their results have been very good, some brilliant (18 rank amongst the top 10% in the country). Six students received a place to study medicine. Well done to all !! And thank you for their sponsors’ tremendous support to get them this far. (see the below photo – before and after
  
  2) This summer’s Grade 10 results (equivalent of GCSEs) were excellent yet again. Nine students scored full 9 As, and five more scored 3.9 GPA or more out of a 4.0 possible! Congratulations to our students !!!!!!!
  
  3) You may remember our success story from early 2010, when we announced that Musbah Dilsebo, (one of our first students on the EEF programme), was accepted at New York University Abu Dhabi with a 4 year full scholarship. He is just about to start his third year at NYU. For his semester abroad he has chosen Argentina. He received an intensive course in Spanish and is now studying in Buenos Aires after spending the summer in Barcelona with his sponsor. Earlier this year after an assessment weekend in Abu Dhabi one further eef student was selected as one of 150 scholars out of a pool of over 10,000 candidates. Tsega Hailu started classes two weeks ago and is loving it. We are SO proud that we now have 4 students studying at NYU and to continue this great partnership that we have established with the university. This year our chosen nominee is a girl, Firehiwot, and we are very confident that she will get a place too – all fingers crossed!!!
  
  4) In April, one of our eef NYU students visited the eef hostel together with 2 professors and 5 students from NYU Abu Dhabi for their solar panel project. They won first place in the energy track at the Hult Global Case Challenge for their plan to provide solar lighting to one million homes in Africa by 2013. The team, which was presented their award by former US President Bill Clinton, was one of three winning teams that together earned USD 1 million for three non-profit organizations to implement their projects. We are very proud to have played a part in this.
  
  5) A success story just as important is the progress of one of our boys, Million. In September 2011 we selected him for our scholarship programme. At the age of 15 he was all alone in Addis Ababa, supporting himself by being a day labourer on building sites at the weekend and by shoe shining after school. He slept in a hut made from sheets of corrugated iron and card board. He looked like an old man and his weight was just 50kg. 7 months into the programme (photo taken in April) and living at the eef hostel he is healthy, happy, he put on 14kg !!! (30lbs) ……. and with an average of 87% at SOT is en route to become the uni graduate he wants to be. Well done Million and thank you so much to his sponsors (photo attached). Maybe you or someone you know would like to support one of our students with a similar background next year?
  
  6) Since this spring we have two new wonderful volunteer directors in Addis. Simon Coulthard and Katia Richardson are running our hostel with great enthusiasm, dedication and leadership. They have helped tremendously to run our organisation effectively and to keep our budgets under control during this time of heavy inflation and cost pressure for eef. We are very grateful for their amazing contribution.
  
  7) 10 new students started the eef programme this summer. They have finished their summer school, received their first sessions of computer training and are now very excited and ready to start their first school year at SOT this week. Their sponsors will hear from them within the next few weeks.
  
  Here comes the bit where we are asking for your help.
  
  We have started the recruitment process for 2013. Due to the heavy inflation and the ever increasing school fees at SOT we have decided that for the first time we allow students to be sponsored by more than one sponsor, allowing us to split the £990 cost per student per year into 2* £500. We hope that this way we will attract more sponsors for 2013. It also makes the students happy because they are eager to communicate and having two mentors is even better than one. Of course, if sponsors wish, they can cover the full cost of £990. This works out at £83 per month.
  
  We are still desperately looking for sponsors for 10 students (before January), so if you know of anyone that would like to sponsor one of our students starting in 2013 please let me / them know.
  
  If you would like to make a contribution to our running cost (it costs £30,000 to run our two student houses per year), we would really like you to consider donating a small monthly amount – £10 go so very far and we really need your support. You could set up a standing order or make a one off donation into our bank account at
  Royal Bank of Scotland
  Ethiopian Education Foundation
  29 Old Brompton Rd
  London SW7 3JE
  Sort Code 16 00 84
  Account 1012 5863
  
  Please help if you can. Any amount would be very much appreciated.
  
  Or if you wish you can make a payment by credit card here https://www.bmycharity.com/eef – BmyCharity charges ZERO commission on your payment and you know ALL of your donation goes directly to our programme in Ethiopia – NOTHING gets wasted on admin.
  
  Please share this also with your friends and family and like us on Facebook, and get your friends to do so too.
  
  If you have any questions please let me know.
  
  Best wishes and many thanks for your continued support !!
- Graduation 2012
- Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
- Grade 12 National Exams are over, 22 students are now awaiting their results and university placements. We’re very proud of all of them. They will all get into uni, most of them have applied for engineering and medicine. Take a look at the “before and after” shot. They have all grown up SO much.
- Addis Ababa trip April / May 2012
- Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
- We just returned from another successful and most rewarding trip to Addis Ababa during which we selected the new student intake for summer 2012 and prepared our current grade 12 students for their high school exit and for university.
  
  We said officially good-bye to our much loved previous Programme Director Diana Houlder, and welcomed her replacement Simon Coulthard.
  
  During our visit our students modelled the many bags of second had clothes we brought, exhibited their latest art work (we now have a regular arts club at the hostel) and the girls enjoyed an inspiring and thought provoking workshop on women empowerment, held by our friend and sponsor Sandra Käfer.
  
  What always inspires us is the change that we see in our students from one year to the next. Take, for example, Million Tefera. In early 2011 we selected him for our scholarship programme. At the age of 15 he had been all alone in Addis Ababa, supporting himself by being a day labourer on building sites at the weekend and by shoe shining after school. He had slept in a hut made from sheets of corrugated iron and card board. He looked like an old man and his weight was just 50kg.
  
  Now, 15 months into the programme and living at the EEF hostel he is a healthy, happy and charming young man. He put on 14kg !!! (30lbs) ……. and with an average of 87% at SOT he is en route to become the university graduate he wants to be. Well done Million and thank you so much to his sponsors and to all our sponsors for their amazing support.
  
  If you would like to sponsor a student or wish to support us in any form, please get in touch.
  
  With best wishes