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Cherokee Gives Back is pleased to work with the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler business school and their Sustainability Immersion, a capstone experiential learning course for graduating MBAs. In addition to traveling to Eastern North Carolina and Kenya, the class visited Ethiopia to help assess income-generating possibilities for one of our partners. The following blog posts are written by the participants for the UNC Kenan-Flagler Sustainability Blog.

Selam Children’s Village Becoming Self-Sustaining

The second in a series of  reflections on UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Sustainability Immersion, our capstone experiential learning course where graduating MBAs work to solve real-world business challenges in Eastern North Carolina and East Africa.

Selam Children’s Village is a unique and special program in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia that has taken philanthropy and the idea of helping others towards a more self-sustaining model.  Myself and three other colleagues visited the Village on the first day of their annual “Bazaar”—a weekend where they showcase the training of the students in an outdoor celebration of food and festivities.  When we entered the gates that morning, I immediately was shocked by this gem of a community.  The Village is focused on educating Ethiopian youths and preparing them to be positive, contributing members of society by giving them the opportunities that are lacking for most people in this part of the world.  Starting as an orphanage in 1986, the village has expanded dramatically to include basic education and vocational training.  Currently, the Village is raising and educating 450 children between the ages 4 and 18 and training an additional 200 in its technical and vocational programs.

Peanut butter made by the Selam Children’s Village

From Selam’s commercial training kitchen with state-of-the-art equipment, to its metal-working warehouse, the Village is not only providing the students with tactical skills, but also encouraging innovation and development within the community.  As we were touring the facility with the General Manager Ato Zenebe Tesfaye, he showed us one of their newly offered products sold in their gift shop—peanut butter.  In addition to making the peanut butter within its training facility, the students from the metal working program had invented a welding machine to crush the peanuts.  This is just one example of how Selam is creating a self-sufficient environment and community that looks to the talent and individuals within the village to find solutions.

The story of Selam is definitely an act of love and compassion.  David and Marie-Luise Roeschli, a Swiss couple with five children, were living in Ethiopia in the 1960s and into the 70s.  Before returning to their home in Switzerland in 1975, they decided to adopt a recently orphaned family of six Ethiopian children that they had come to know very well during their time in Ethiopia.  Fifteen years later, the eldest Ethiopian daughter, Wz Tsehay, decided to return to her native town in Ethiopia in response to the severe famine and drought that had struck the country in 1984.  Seeing all of the suffering and orphaned children, she decided to open an orphanage, and received support and donations to do so from her Swiss family and the connections through the family’s church in Switzerland.  David and Marie-Luise were so touched and inspired by their adopted daughter’s efforts, that they soon joined her in Addis and began developing the community by starting a metal-working training facility for the boys and a home economics/kitchen for the girls.  In addition to using their network of high-society Swiss colleagues to fund these programs, they personally put their sweat and tears into creating a community that could, one day, be self-sufficient.  Instead of simply gathering donations to feed to the Ethiopian orphans as was the model of many other foreigners and charitable organizations, the Roeschlis’ envisioned an environment where their support would help the children and community help themselves, by giving them the skills and education that could propel them into a future that was sustainable for generations to come.

Currently, the village has a variety of income generating activities—including the restaurant, edible products from their gift shop (such as peanut butter, sausage and baked goods), fruits and vegetables from the Selam Farm, and metal-working products such as water pumps, metal crop threshers and butter churners.  Although Selam still relies on the generous support and donations from its Swiss foundation, the recent formation of a strong management team in Ethiopia has established sound 2-, 5- and 10-year goals focused on long term self-sufficient sustainability and shows great promise for the future.

Cherokee Gives Back is pleased to work with the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler business school and their Sustainability Immersion, a capstone experiential learning course for graduating MBAs. In addition to traveling to Eastern North Carolina and Kenya, the class visited Ethiopia to help assess income-generating possibilities for one of our partners. The following blog posts are written by the participants for the UNC Kenan-Flagler Sustainability Blog.

The TO.MO.CA Coffee Experience in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The first in a series of  reflections on UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Sustainability Immersion, our capstone experiential learning course where graduating MBAs work to solve real-world business challenges in Eastern North Carolina and East Africa.

The smell of roasting coffee beans virtually assaults you when you enter the front door of TO.MO.CA (Tomoca) Coffee. The first sniff is almost overpowering, but each subsequent one pulls you in a bit more gently. I love coffee: the smell, the taste, the warm cup early in the morning, and of course, the caffeine. I seemed to get my morning “fix” just from the aroma inside the café.

A coffee entrepreneur in Addis Ababa 

Besides the ubiquitous Kaldi’s Coffee cafés, a Starbucks knock-off, Tomoca may be the most famous coffee store and café in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Tomoca baristas work two large espresso machines to keep the constant stream of visitors and locals satisfied. They also sell bags of whole bean or ground coffee.

That day, our team of five, plus our wonderful translator Noah, were researching price fluctuations in food products. Our hosts, Cherokee Gives Back, connected us with Youth Impact, an amazing mentoring program for orphans and street youth in Addis Ababa. We worked with Youth Impact to determine the feasibility of and best practices for opening a restaurant in Addis.

We were lucky enough to meet Akalu, the owner of Tomoca, when we first arrived at the café. He kindly walked us through his prices and the fluctuations that occur during the year. When he heard that we were working with a group that was thinking of opening a restaurant, he said he had to take us next door to visit a budding entrepreneur who serves great coffee.

Akalu is a strong supporter of Ethiopian entrepreneurship, and he explained that opportunities for small businesses abound. So instead of drinking coffee at his own establishment, he generously took us next door to the bottom floor of a small building filled with shops. In the lobby, a woman served traditional Ethiopian coffee, heated over coals. Akalu joined us for coffee and explained that this is the right way to start a business: a small start with low capital requirements and then building up with incremental growth. This was a theme we heard reiterated throughout our trip from a number of restaurateurs.

Our team really enjoyed our visit to Tomoca and our experiences with the local coffee entrepreneurs.  Our visit displayed the generous nature of all the Ethiopians we met on our trip and the sense of opportunity that exists in Addis Ababa. And I believe the smell of Tomoca café will be with me for years to come.

For extra credit, here is a great article about Akalu and Tomoca Coffee about Akalu’s frequent trips to the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) where he buys the raw coffee beans.

The Connected in Hope Foundation (CHF), in partnership with the Former Women Fuel Wood Carriers Association (FWFWCA), supports sixty former fuel wood carriers in the Mount Entoto area of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The women weave scarves or make baskets, but their access to even local markets is limited. Through the internet and print media, CHF introduces, promotes and sells the women’s handmade products in local and global markets. Additional training and consistent access to high-quality raw materials encourages women to create new designs and experiment with new product lines.

Interns are needed to assist with quality control, shipping preparation and marketing or to assist in the preschool for forty children of the former fuel wood carriers.

Each month, the Global Impact Tour by live58.org highlights a different poverty issue in a different country, along with a world-class project addressing that issue.  The purpose is to educate people about poverty issues and inspire them with proven solutions.

The month of April focuses on poverty and deforestation in the Dominican Republic while raising money to plant 90,000 trees with the organization Plant with Purpose.  Watch the video below to learn more about the issue and why Cherokee Gives Back is supporting this important initiative.

Cherokee Gives Back is happy to announce three winners of the 2012-2013 Hawkins Scholarship from PAX- Program of Academic Exchange.  Hosea, Joshua and Samuel are high school students in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, who now have the opportunity to spend a year in the United States.

The three students were chosen by the PAX Board of Directors based on their grades and academic merit; financial need; community service and/or extra curricular activities; other affiliations or memberships; interview and recommendations.  The trio are now preparing for their August departure to the U.S. and eagerly awaiting news of their host family and community placements.

The Hawkins Scholarship is a full scholarship to enable students from Africa to participate in the PAX School Year USA. It covers all visa and travel expenses as well as providing a monthly stipend during the school year.  It is awarded by PAX in honor of Byron Hawkins, a beloved PAX Community Coordinator who passed away in 2008.  The award is funded by the PAX Means Peace scholarship program, which has provided scholarships to students from Ethiopia, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Somaliland.

This is Cherokee Gives Back’s fourth year of partnering with PAX for this scholarship, and we are pleased to assist them in identifying qualified students and in preparing the students for their year abroad.

Best wishes to Hosea, Joshua and Samuel!!!

We ask all of the participants in our Cultural Awareness and Leadership Program to write at least one blog post for us during their time in Ethiopia.  For many of them, this is not a challenge as they are already keeping a blog for friends and family.  In the case of Billy and Tara, they did such an excellent job of posting, that I couldn’t decide on just one to include on our site.

So for those of you who are interested in understanding just what this program is about, I encourage you to read through Billy and Tara’s blog.  You’ll get insight into life in Addis as well as the work of one of our favorite partners, Destiny Academy.  Enjoy!

Learning To Learn

For some reason, perhaps because I erroneously heard it was the national language (perhaps because it is the only language spoken at universities), or maybe because I knew the kindergarteners I’d be teaching had English class, I was under the impression that Ethiopian people generally spoke English, many as a first language.

Lol.

Over eighty languages are spoken in Ethiopia, but the only relevant ones in Addis Ababa are Amharic, English (a distant second), Italian (a distant third), and a rising fourth which I will get into in a later series of blogs. Amharic is the language here. A few Addis Ababans speak English fluently (none without a powerful accent), a sprinkling can slowly but comfortably engage in half-broken conversation kind of like I speak Spanish, many know a few words, and the majority of the population speaks no English.

There are 8-11 adults who work or just hang out at the school I volunteer at. Four speak English well enough to regularly converse with me and the others know little more than good morning, how are you, etc. The 4 to 6 year-old students know the letters of the alphabet, numbers up to 10, some colors, a few words like “cat” and “ice cream”, and not much else. I cannot hold a conversation with any of them and I cannot speak any whole sentences and expect them to comprehend what I’m saying.

Amharic is nothing like English or other Western languages. Amharic has its own alphabet with 217 different characters, or seven versions of 31 different letters. Every syllable has its own letter. “Sa”, “say”, “seh”, “see”, “sih”, “so”, “su”, the syllables you can make starting with the “s” sound, each have their own slightly-different iteration of the root letter. The kicker is that Amharic has several syllables completely alien to English pronunciation. I work at a school in the “Kechene” neighborhood, but “Kechene” is just a made-up word that approximates an Amharic word that is literally impossible for me to write or sound-out without speaking. The first two syllables of the word involve making sounds that English speakers have never made in their lives. Other than briefly trying and failing to roll my “rr”s in Spanish class, I never imagined there might be syllables out there I’d never uttered before.

When I leave the house to go to school, I enter the Amharic world. The immediate goal every morning is to take two minibuses (more on the mesmerizing minibus system in later posts) across Addis Ababa to “Kechene.” Imagine trying to get from, say, San Francisco to Oakland, taking two buses, without knowing English or anyone who did. The first few times I tried were rather grievous affairs dependent on asking randoms one word destination questions, but then one of the housemates realized the Amharic letters scrawled on top of the minibuses might actually be cues to the locations the buses were headed. I found a commonality in one of the Amharic letters for the bus I needed, a “T”ish looking letter that’s like P in English. A few bus rides later I had managed to deduce the three-character word for “Piazza” written on all the minibuses headed there. Though it seems simple, this was a thrilling, confidence-building leap in my Amharic education. Actually boarding a Piazza bus is an entirely different matter, however, whose horrors will be better described in a future post.

School is exhaustively challenging. Teaching English to kids who don’t speak English without being able to speak their own language is an arduous process. I quickly realized drawing pictures was a precious intermediary, then realized I didn’t know how to capably draw many pictures on chalkboards, that I had a hard time differentiating between a rat and a cat, a cow and a dog.

Math was hopeless until I learned 1-30 in Amharic along with +, –, and =. Jumping through that hoop was another thrilling leap though, and now I feel legitimately useful teaching math.

I have to learn to draw, have to learn how to teach, have to learn Amharic, have to learn the kids’ names which is particularly trying because Amharic names don’t correspond to English ones. They’re all just random combinations of syllables to me.

It doesn’t end when school gets out. Navigating Addis Ababa can be rather enjoyable, but doing so proficiently is still a challenge. Just trying to order a juice and coffee together is a chore I’ve already failed to realize on two separate occasions. Ethiopians find it preposterous that someone could want to drink juice and coffee at the same time; I think passing up a delicious $.50 macchiato and $.80 fresh mango/avocado juice is more ludicrous.

If I want to play or watch a sport, it’s going to be soccer, a game I haven’t played since I was nine years old. I suck. I keep playing. I have to learn to play better. At home I have to learn how to live in a house with an array of young people I had never met twenty days ago, have to learn to sleep with earplugs and wake up at 7 (that actually came automatically at first, jetlag I guess, but I seem to be unlearning it).

I have never been forced to learn like this before. I had tremendous zeal for learning and memorizing things in elementary school and feasted upon the competitive aspects of schooling, even though my elementary school didn’t have grades. In middle school I realized I didn’t have to try very hard to get As, and in high school I realized I could get where I wanted to without expending much effort. The game switched from trying to know as many things as possible to trying to subsist on as little study as possible. There have been some intense learning experiences in my life (poker being the most obvious) but they were always born from amusement, never mandated.

Everything about the experience here is forced. I use that word to convey both its meanings: Many things are compulsory and quickly assimilated into my existence, without an alternative; other things are strained, uncomfortable but functional.

The other day, one of my housemates said something I found incredibly interesting: that she and her husband actively put themselves in uncomfortable situations to keep themselves mentally fit, to keep life challenging, to ensure their lives are always dynamic, never satiated. I was stupefied by this comment. For as long as I can remember I have been focused on efficiency, minimalism, making life as smooth and as graceful as possible. Yet somehow I wound up here, where little goes according to schedule and nothing comes without effort. Though there hasn’t been any shortage of challenge in my life over the last nine months, I suppose I put myself in this position on purpose. Every day I seem to learn a little more about why I did that, and I hope to fully understand by the end of my stay here.

During her stay at the Cherokee House, Jessica Russell spent time with our partner, Youth Impact, and made this video about their work with at-risk young people in Addis.  You can also watch it at http://www.habeshastories.com/.  Great job, Jessica!

See how former sex industry workers in Addis Ababa find peace and purpose in handcrafting beautiful scarves for abroad with our partner, FashionABLE.

Ethiopians celebrate Christmas on January 7th.  Their Christmas holiday takes place in January because Ethiopia follows their own calendar.

Last week, our local partner, Destiny Academy, kicked off the Christmas season before their vacation. The festivities included their very own Christmas pageant, singing, a banana eating contest, an egg race, pin the tail on the donkey and a special visit from Santa. The children were filled with joy and excitement as they geared up for time with their church, family and friends.