Exciting Developments in Ethiopia!

Here is another missive from our Ethiopian Executive Director, Yehalem, about exciting developments in the country:

“The new prime minister pleasantly surprised many of us by bringing women to power in unbelievable size. He has down sized the ministries and appointed women to head 50% of them. This morning, the parliament approved his nominee for the Supreme Court and we have now the first woman president of the supreme court with the monumental task of making the justice system independent. More importantly, Ethiopia also got its first woman head of state (president) just last week.”

In other news, we have partnered with the international organization, Operation Eyesight, and Yehalem recently sent this report:

“Operation eyesight’s ophthalmologist gave a one day practical training to 2-4 teachers from our target schools on screening children with eye problems and the teachers have started screening students… Operation Eyesight people have also brought us lots of glasses which will be dispensed to students and staff by volunteers from the Bahir Dar University’s eye department.”

Update: Lots of new developments!

New Prime Minister brings Reform

Yehalem writes that

“there have been very encouraging developments in Ethiopia over the last 6 months with the coming to power of a new prime minister. To mention a few, Ethiopia and Eritrea have resumed diplomatic relations after 20 years; all political prisoners have been released; the  press, civil society and press laws are being revised by an independent team of experts and with input from stakeholders; and, opposition groups are returning home... We are all excited here and things are moving faster than anybody thought.”

Projects on the go

We have increased our capacity from doing 2 project in the previous year to 4 in 2018, thanks to having been able to mobilize an amazing 70% of the costs of projects within the country. Three of the schools are opening in October and the fourth will open in January 2019. We have so far implemented the physical capacity upgrades and started the school greening aspects of the new projects, and we have installed water tanks and access thereto in our existing schools. Teacher training programs in all schools will continue in October. We also conducted learning assessments in all of our schools (including those being upgraded this year) in June 2018. The analysis compares this year’s results with results from similar assessments done on existing schools last year, and includes school-to-school comparisons. The principals and teachers are very excited about the assessments and are keen to use them as a baseline for improvements.

FGCF recognition

We are extremely happy that the federal ministry of education recently acknowledged our cost effective, participatory, and holistic approach. They invited our Executive Director, Yehalem, to speak and share our model at a conference held in Addis Ababa for NGOs and government agencies working on education throughout Ethiopia.

Visit from Yehalem

Yehalem will be coming to Canada again in November. We are planning a major strategic planning session which include him, along with our new Board members Grant Simpson and Terry Hillaby, and a number of other individuals who will lend their perspectives on the future of FGCF.