Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, December 13, 2010
14
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Why Donate? The orphans of Shanto need your donations!
Friends of Orphans and Vulnerable Children Wish List
Shanto, Ethiopia..
Whether children are orphaned as a result of disease, poverty, violence or natural disaster, the results are the same – children alone.
Please Help! Donate!!! email me: akoobrien@msn.com
The following items are needed:
Personal Care Items
Clothes (gently used or new, boys & girls)
Shoes / Sneakers
Jackets and sweaters
Skirts
Jeans
Socks
Underwear
Watches
Earrings
Necklaces
Hair Do-Dads
Headbands
Towels
Deodorant
Shampoo & Conditioner
Soaps
Body Lotion
Tooth Brush and Toothpaste (ask your dentist, they may like to help)
First Aid Kits (items are hard to find in Ethiopia)
School Supplies
Notebooks
Markers
Pencils
Pens
Mathematical Sets
Books for Library
Crayons
Educational games for little children
Toys
Office Supplies
Printers (very important)
Printer Inks for Hp LaserJet 1010 and 1005 series
Photo copy machine (very important)
Laminating machine (very important)
Digital Video Camera (very important)
Digital Camera
Rechargeable Batteries (AA type with 220v charger)
AA Batteries for digital cameras
Laptop and Desktop computers for office use
Staplers
Adding Machine
Coffee Machine
Money Needed for Items to be Purchased in Ethiopia
Blankets (can be bought in Ethiopia)
Bed Sheets (can be bought in Ethiopia)
Beds (Can be bought in Ethiopia)
Mattress (can be bought in Ethiopia)
Kitchen Materials (very important and can be bought in Ethiopia)
African Hair Oil/Grease (available to purchase in Ethiopia)
Shanto, Ethiopia..
Whether children are orphaned as a result of disease, poverty, violence or natural disaster, the results are the same – children alone.
Please Help! Donate!!! email me: akoobrien@msn.com
The following items are needed:
Personal Care Items
Clothes (gently used or new, boys & girls)
Shoes / Sneakers
Jackets and sweaters
Skirts
Jeans
Socks
Underwear
Watches
Earrings
Necklaces
Hair Do-Dads
Headbands
Towels
Deodorant
Shampoo & Conditioner
Soaps
Body Lotion
Tooth Brush and Toothpaste (ask your dentist, they may like to help)
First Aid Kits (items are hard to find in Ethiopia)
School Supplies
Notebooks
Markers
Pencils
Pens
Mathematical Sets
Books for Library
Crayons
Educational games for little children
Toys
Office Supplies
Printers (very important)
Printer Inks for Hp LaserJet 1010 and 1005 series
Photo copy machine (very important)
Laminating machine (very important)
Digital Video Camera (very important)
Digital Camera
Rechargeable Batteries (AA type with 220v charger)
AA Batteries for digital cameras
Laptop and Desktop computers for office use
Staplers
Adding Machine
Coffee Machine
Money Needed for Items to be Purchased in Ethiopia
Blankets (can be bought in Ethiopia)
Bed Sheets (can be bought in Ethiopia)
Beds (Can be bought in Ethiopia)
Mattress (can be bought in Ethiopia)
Kitchen Materials (very important and can be bought in Ethiopia)
African Hair Oil/Grease (available to purchase in Ethiopia)
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Why Sponsor and an update
Team Tasfa now has 28 people traveling to Ethiopia in 69 DAYS!!. There are currently approximately 57 orphans we will be helping as well as an additional 10 vulnerable children. Below is some great information from Team Tasfa's social worker, Sharon Bonnett. Please read and sponsor one of Shantos orphans if you can.
Here is US-FOVC's first official communication regarding the orphan sponsorship program!
Thank you for your interest in sponsoring a child through Friends of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (FOVC) in Shanto, Ethiopia. It is my great pleasure to announce that FOVC is ready to get the sponsorship program off the ground!
The past couple of months, US-FOVC has been in the process of developing the sponsorship program and anticipated beginning the sponsorship program in January 2011. It has come to our attention that the need for sponsorships to begin is very urgent. FOVC-Ethiopia is currently responsible for 57 orphaned children in Shanto. Twenty-four of these children joined FOVC in mid-September after the local government, seeing the work done by FOVC, requested that these children be admitted into the program. While we are thankful that the local government is supportive of FOVC's projects and is seeking help for the children in their community, the admittance of 24 new children has placed a significant burden on FOVC. FOVC-Ethiopia's Executive Director, Desalegn Daka, reported that these children "need immediate support to sustain their lives." Because of this, we feel it is in the children's best interest to begin the sponsorship program and not wait until after Team Tasfa travels in December.
All 57 children are in need of sponsors. $35 a month will provide a child with food, clothing, education and medical care. Sponsorships help children living in poverty begin to break the cycle of poverty and hunger through education As a sponsor, you will receive photos and biographical information of your child, and the opportunity to communicate with your child 3 times per year. It is our hope that a long term relationship will develop between children and their sponsors.
Your tax-deductible gift will have immediate impact and will offer hope to a child desperately in need. Please contact me at followingthewayhome@gmail.com for more information or to begin your sponsorship.
Seeking the best for children of Shanto,
Sharon Bonnett
FOVC Social Worker
http://fovcethiopia.wordpress.com/
Here is US-FOVC's first official communication regarding the orphan sponsorship program!
Thank you for your interest in sponsoring a child through Friends of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (FOVC) in Shanto, Ethiopia. It is my great pleasure to announce that FOVC is ready to get the sponsorship program off the ground!
The past couple of months, US-FOVC has been in the process of developing the sponsorship program and anticipated beginning the sponsorship program in January 2011. It has come to our attention that the need for sponsorships to begin is very urgent. FOVC-Ethiopia is currently responsible for 57 orphaned children in Shanto. Twenty-four of these children joined FOVC in mid-September after the local government, seeing the work done by FOVC, requested that these children be admitted into the program. While we are thankful that the local government is supportive of FOVC's projects and is seeking help for the children in their community, the admittance of 24 new children has placed a significant burden on FOVC. FOVC-Ethiopia's Executive Director, Desalegn Daka, reported that these children "need immediate support to sustain their lives." Because of this, we feel it is in the children's best interest to begin the sponsorship program and not wait until after Team Tasfa travels in December.
All 57 children are in need of sponsors. $35 a month will provide a child with food, clothing, education and medical care. Sponsorships help children living in poverty begin to break the cycle of poverty and hunger through education As a sponsor, you will receive photos and biographical information of your child, and the opportunity to communicate with your child 3 times per year. It is our hope that a long term relationship will develop between children and their sponsors.
Your tax-deductible gift will have immediate impact and will offer hope to a child desperately in need. Please contact me at followingthewayhome@gmail.com for more information or to begin your sponsorship.
Seeking the best for children of Shanto,
Sharon Bonnett
FOVC Social Worker
http://fovcethiopia.wordpress.com/
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Why?
Thanks to Lee Ann, the time keeper, we will be leaving for Ethiopia in 95 days (!!)
This is very sad, but is the reality of Shanto Ethiopia ~ as well as so many other places. Please donate and help make a difference ~ even small differences can add up to change.
Associated Press) SHANTO, Ethiopia — This year's poor rains have nearly killed Bizunesh.
The 3-year-old weighs less than 10 pounds. Her long limbs, weak and folded like a praying mantis, cannot carry even her slight weight. She cannot speak. She doesn't want to eat. Health officials say she is permanently stunted.
Bizunesh — whose name, sadly, means "plentiful" — is one of untold numbers of children hit by this year's double blow of a countrywide drought and skyrocketing global food prices that has brought famine, once again, to Ethiopia.
"She should be bigger than this," said her mother Zewdunesh Feltam, rocking the listless child. "Before there was maize, different kinds of food. But now there is nothing ... I beg for milk from my neighbors."
The U.N. children's agency said in a statement Tuesday an estimated 126,000 Ethiopian children urgently need food and medical care because of severe malnutrition — and called the current crisis "the worst since the major humanitarian crisis of 2003."
The U.N. World Food Program estimates that 2.7 million Ethiopians will need emergency food aid because of late rains — nearly double the number who needed help last year. An additional 5 million of Ethiopia's 80 million people receive aid each year because they never have enough food, whether harvests are good or not.
In Shanto, a southwestern agricultural area that grows sweet potatoes, recent rains arrived too late to save the harvest.
The crisis here is vivid. A feeding center run by the Irish charity GOAL has admitted 73 starving children in the past month.Aid agencies say emergency intervention is not enough and are appealing for more money to support regular feeding programs.
Some, like Bizunesh, are frail and skeletal. Others, like 4-year-old Eyob Tadesse, have grossly swollen limbs in a sign of extreme malnutrition.
Eyob, whose mother said he used to be a lively, talkative child, sat in a stupor, unable to speak, not moving even to brush away the flies that swarmed over his face. The sunny room humid with a recent, too late, rain shower was made gloomy by an eerie silence despite being full of sick children. Chronic malnutrition can affect children for life, stunting their growth, brain development and immune systems, which leaves them vulnerable to a host of illnesses.
Many mothers said their families were trying to survive on a gluey, chewy bread made of the root of the "false banana" plant — one of many wild or so-called famine foods that Ethiopians depend on in times of trouble.
It's not known how many children have died or are starving now. Local and international aid and health workers say between 10 and nearly 20 percent of Ethiopia's children are malnourished — 15 percent is considered a critical situation. In 2006, Ethiopia had 13.4 million children under age 5, according to UNICEF.
Samuel Akale, a nutritionist with the government's disaster prevention agency, said the hunger will get worse. "The number of severely malnourished will increase, and then they'll die."
WFP officials say the drought has affected six of Ethiopia's nine regions, stretching from Tigray in the north to the vast and dry Somali region in the south, though not every part of each region is affected.
Spokesman Greg Beals said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is preparing an appeal for additional tens of millions of dollars.
"This is a real crisis that needs to be addressed," he said.
Ethiopia is a country with a history of hunger. It's food problems drew international attention in 1984 when a famine compounded by communist policies killed some 1 million people. Pictures of stick-thin children like Bizunesh were broadcast onto television sets around the world.
This year's crisis is far less severe. But drought and chronic hunger persist in Ethiopia, a Horn of Africa nation known for its coffee, a major export. In 2003, droughts led 13.2 million people to seek emergency food aid. Drought in 2000 left more than 10 million needing emergency food.
Drought is especially disastrous in Ethiopia because more than 80 percent of people live off the land, and agriculture drives the economy, accounting for half of all domestic production and 85 percent of exports. But many also go hungry because of government policies. Ethiopia's government buys all crops from farmers at fixed low prices. And the government owns all the land, so it cannot be used as collateral for loans.
"What we're doing at the moment is waiting until children get severely malnourished, taking them into the feeding program, getting them back to a level of moderate malnutrition and then watching them cycle back," said Hatty Newhouse, a nutrition adviser from GOAL.
There are fears that the next harvest also will fail."We are crying with the mothers and the children," said Akale, the nutritionist.
This is very sad, but is the reality of Shanto Ethiopia ~ as well as so many other places. Please donate and help make a difference ~ even small differences can add up to change.
Associated Press) SHANTO, Ethiopia — This year's poor rains have nearly killed Bizunesh.
The 3-year-old weighs less than 10 pounds. Her long limbs, weak and folded like a praying mantis, cannot carry even her slight weight. She cannot speak. She doesn't want to eat. Health officials say she is permanently stunted.
Bizunesh — whose name, sadly, means "plentiful" — is one of untold numbers of children hit by this year's double blow of a countrywide drought and skyrocketing global food prices that has brought famine, once again, to Ethiopia.
"She should be bigger than this," said her mother Zewdunesh Feltam, rocking the listless child. "Before there was maize, different kinds of food. But now there is nothing ... I beg for milk from my neighbors."
The U.N. children's agency said in a statement Tuesday an estimated 126,000 Ethiopian children urgently need food and medical care because of severe malnutrition — and called the current crisis "the worst since the major humanitarian crisis of 2003."
The U.N. World Food Program estimates that 2.7 million Ethiopians will need emergency food aid because of late rains — nearly double the number who needed help last year. An additional 5 million of Ethiopia's 80 million people receive aid each year because they never have enough food, whether harvests are good or not.
In Shanto, a southwestern agricultural area that grows sweet potatoes, recent rains arrived too late to save the harvest.
The crisis here is vivid. A feeding center run by the Irish charity GOAL has admitted 73 starving children in the past month.Aid agencies say emergency intervention is not enough and are appealing for more money to support regular feeding programs.
Some, like Bizunesh, are frail and skeletal. Others, like 4-year-old Eyob Tadesse, have grossly swollen limbs in a sign of extreme malnutrition.
Eyob, whose mother said he used to be a lively, talkative child, sat in a stupor, unable to speak, not moving even to brush away the flies that swarmed over his face. The sunny room humid with a recent, too late, rain shower was made gloomy by an eerie silence despite being full of sick children. Chronic malnutrition can affect children for life, stunting their growth, brain development and immune systems, which leaves them vulnerable to a host of illnesses.
Many mothers said their families were trying to survive on a gluey, chewy bread made of the root of the "false banana" plant — one of many wild or so-called famine foods that Ethiopians depend on in times of trouble.
It's not known how many children have died or are starving now. Local and international aid and health workers say between 10 and nearly 20 percent of Ethiopia's children are malnourished — 15 percent is considered a critical situation. In 2006, Ethiopia had 13.4 million children under age 5, according to UNICEF.
Samuel Akale, a nutritionist with the government's disaster prevention agency, said the hunger will get worse. "The number of severely malnourished will increase, and then they'll die."
WFP officials say the drought has affected six of Ethiopia's nine regions, stretching from Tigray in the north to the vast and dry Somali region in the south, though not every part of each region is affected.
Spokesman Greg Beals said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is preparing an appeal for additional tens of millions of dollars.
"This is a real crisis that needs to be addressed," he said.
Ethiopia is a country with a history of hunger. It's food problems drew international attention in 1984 when a famine compounded by communist policies killed some 1 million people. Pictures of stick-thin children like Bizunesh were broadcast onto television sets around the world.
This year's crisis is far less severe. But drought and chronic hunger persist in Ethiopia, a Horn of Africa nation known for its coffee, a major export. In 2003, droughts led 13.2 million people to seek emergency food aid. Drought in 2000 left more than 10 million needing emergency food.
Drought is especially disastrous in Ethiopia because more than 80 percent of people live off the land, and agriculture drives the economy, accounting for half of all domestic production and 85 percent of exports. But many also go hungry because of government policies. Ethiopia's government buys all crops from farmers at fixed low prices. And the government owns all the land, so it cannot be used as collateral for loans.
"What we're doing at the moment is waiting until children get severely malnourished, taking them into the feeding program, getting them back to a level of moderate malnutrition and then watching them cycle back," said Hatty Newhouse, a nutrition adviser from GOAL.
There are fears that the next harvest also will fail."We are crying with the mothers and the children," said Akale, the nutritionist.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
New photos, new jewelry, almost time to go to Ethiopia
The Habesha fundraiser was an incredible success for Jessie and Eliot. They raised $1,000 for a school they are supporting in Jimma, Ethiopia and all hopes are that their boys will be home soon. As their adoption coordinator, of course I hope it is sooner than soon.
I sold jewelry at Habesha and while sales were good, I need to sell more to reach my goal of getting to Shanto, Ethiopia in December. I am always adding new items to my store at http://www.somewhereincolorado.etsy.com/. Go visit, buy jewelry to help me get to Ethiopia or donate directly to Rocky Mountain Christian Church, include my name ~ Aneata O'Brien; Ethiopia ~ on your check and send to Lory Howlett at 2929 Sandpiper Place Longmont Colorado 80503; all donations are tax deductible. While donations are being filtered though this church until Friends of Orphans and Vulnerable Children gets thier non profit status, you will not be donating to the church, but directly to help me to get to Ethiopia to help build an orphanage/home for the 26 orphans in Shanto. It is an increidible cause worth considering.
For now, new photos of Shanto, thanks to my friend Emmebeth who recently spent some time with my orphans:
I sold jewelry at Habesha and while sales were good, I need to sell more to reach my goal of getting to Shanto, Ethiopia in December. I am always adding new items to my store at http://www.somewhereincolorado.etsy.com/. Go visit, buy jewelry to help me get to Ethiopia or donate directly to Rocky Mountain Christian Church, include my name ~ Aneata O'Brien; Ethiopia ~ on your check and send to Lory Howlett at 2929 Sandpiper Place Longmont Colorado 80503; all donations are tax deductible. While donations are being filtered though this church until Friends of Orphans and Vulnerable Children gets thier non profit status, you will not be donating to the church, but directly to help me to get to Ethiopia to help build an orphanage/home for the 26 orphans in Shanto. It is an increidible cause worth considering.
For now, new photos of Shanto, thanks to my friend Emmebeth who recently spent some time with my orphans:
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