Funding Project – Mekele, Ethiopia Work is nearly finished on the agriculture and poultry project at the Abba Gebremichael Catholic School (AGCS) in Mekele, Ethiopia. Mekele is in the Tigray region of Ethiopia that was subject to civil conflict between 2020 and 2022. Many people are still displaced after the war and the school roll has increased from 1400 to over 2200 pupils. A lot of families cannot afford to pay school fees. To ensure the self-sustainability of the school it was proposed to implement an agriculture and poultry farming project with the aim of selling produce to generate an income for the school. It will also be used to teach agriculture science to students and the local community, where they can learn about farming and also about climate awareness and using solar power for irrigation. Through the Vincentian Fathers, Misean Cara provided €37,616 towards this project and VLM funded the remainder through church collections. The hope for the future is that the agriculture project will ensure financial security for the school and that it will become a model farm for the local area.   Share this article

Volunteer Story – Luke Hogan Luke Hogan spent 6 weeks over the summer in Ethiopia. His first three weeks were at the Montessori teacher training institute and Women’s Empowerment Centre run by the Daughters of Charity in Sodo and his second three weeks were at the Ambo Lazarist Deaf School. Luke helped the Montessori teachers revise for their exams and practiced conversational English with the kindergarten teachers. Moving to the Women’s Empowerment Centre he taught intensive English daily to full classes. While in Ambo Luke taught English classes to up to 39 teachers and 54 students. Some of the teachers were from the deaf school across the road and he had a sign language interpreter in the classroom to assist. Luke said “the teachers did 5 hours of English lessons a day and by our last lesson it was amazing to see the progress they had made and their increased confidence in speaking English. The fact that these teachers showed up every day and spent 5 hours a day practicing English, their 3rd language, while on their summer holidays was even more surprising and showed a level of interest/willingness to learn I had never seen before! I still can’t believe the level of gratitude that the teachers and students had for my lessons despite it being such a small amount of time from my summer holidays. When leaving they gave me a cultural outfit including long legged bottoms, a long-sleeved shirt in their Provincial colours, a Jebena (a traditional coffee pot) and a coffee set. Ethiopia was an amazing experience, and they couldn’t have made me feel more welcome and at home in the short time I was there.” Share this article