Our third day in Adama was full of fun. Of course, we did some work, going over financials and doing some planning with Faya Orphanage, delivering packages and taking pictures of House 2 House kids, but we also packed in some fun as well.
Meseret and Sintayehu’s younger sister, who looks remarkably like my younger sister! is a fabulous cook withher own restaurant. We had been treated to amazing door wat and shiro the day before, and this day she came over to give Tawnya and I shiro lessons. No wonder my shiro always turned out so powdery and yucky.. I was doing it all wrong! The result.. Delicious! And the kids ate our shiro for a morning snack.
My mother Rita, who does the updates for the community kids, interviewed Sintayehu for hours to get all the info on the children who are now in the orphanage, as well as the kids in the House 2 House program. So our next set of updates will be more comprehensive…
Later that afternoon, we were off to Addis for more meetings… And shopping!
The two background pictures are of the mosque and street leading to the new Faya house.
Yesterday night we arrived in Adama, a few hours south of Addis Ababa. Waiting for us were all the children at Faya Orphanage, decked out in their best white clothes.
Today, we spent several hours at the orphanage, meeting with orphanage director Meseret, and playing with the kids. Meseret kindly brought us up to date on their organizational costs, and we learned many more details about the administration of the organization. We started to do some future forecasting and strategizing about how to deal with escalating inflation, a changing adoption scene, etc. She is such a professional and it was great to learn, and connect with her again. I think we all have a lot of mutual respect for each other… She and Sintayehu are so committed and accomplish so much for some of Ethiopia’s poorest of poor children.
There are a few facts about the orphanage care that I can share that you readers might find interesting. Faya currently has four full time caregivers. They work 13 days in a row (then one day off!) and live at the orphanage day and night with the kids. These dedicated ladies sleep on mattresses in the kids room at night, cook for the children, care for them, and provide a lot of love.
Faya Orphanage serves many functions. It has three mandates: to house children on a permanent or temporary basis, to facilitate children towards adoption, and to contribute to the community through the House 2 House program.
Our Faya Child sponsors will know that when we send out update on Faya children every six months, it is more common than not that they are switched to sponsoring a different child. The reasons are simple… Sintayehu and Meseret do their best to, first, enable children to return to their families and communities. We have had several children rejoin their families in the last few months… Even long term residents I met 2.5 years ago. We got to see all of those four kids today and in Ambo, and it was wonderful to see them. Some children have also been placed for adoption, most recently to Norway.
There are also children who find a temporary home at Faya Orphanage. For example, when we went to Ambo, I was surprised to learn that one of the children I personally sponsor had gone to live at Faya orphanage with her twin brother for a few months, as her family could not care for her temporarily. There is a picture of me enjoying a visit with her, doing “sharuba” braids on a doll we brought. What a sweeteheart. We expect she and her brother will return to their family in a few weeks time. There are other children that come to the orphanage for daycare, and other temporary reasons.
Sponsors… Your money is being well spent! And truly, the organization is doing a fabulous job of all those three purposes. Without you, these children would not be so well cared for, and wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow and thrive. Thank you!!
We are interested in hearing from you the sponsors of Faya kids, about the sponsorship structure.
Currently, multiple sponsors are assigned to one child… All the sponsors together enable the funding of this organization. (It takes a lot of money to care, and to care well, for multiple children 24/7.) The assigned child usually changes every six months for the reasons explained above, but we TRY to ensure that you receive new information about the child assigned. Because children are transitory, sometimes the assigned child is gone before we get an update completed, or are too new.
Alternatively, we could restructure these sponsorships to be orphanage sponsorships instead of child sponsorships. In this alternative structure, Faya Orphanage sponsors would receive an overall update on the orphanage… How many children there are, etc., and pictures of ALL of them at the time of the update. We could also profile one child each update.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Do you like the current “FAYA CHILD” structure even though the child is always changing and we may not have complete information, OR, would you like us to reframe the sponsorship as a “FAYA ORPHANAGE” sponsorship as proposed above? (Either way, the money is all being spent the same way, but the structure would change what you as sponsors receive.)
We’d love your feedback… What do you sponsors think? Please leave a comment!
Received an email from Arnica in Nakemte tonight. Her internet access was very poor, so she only sent a quick note:
We went to Ambe and Guder and were very impressed with the House 2 House programs there. We got to meet many of the children and their guardians. We also had a meeting with the officials in government and learn much more about their side of the process. Details to follow. We also met with an enterprising couple of young ladies who have a community lending program and are looking for a partner. Sounds very promising.
Arnica promises to post more when she arrives back in Addis. Stay tuned!
Thanks so much to Cory and the other fabulous folks at BC Tree Fruits who have donated a laptop for us to take to Faya Orphanage. We are so pleased – this will help outr partner organization with their reporting and organization immensely.
Vulnerable Children Society’s treasurer/money lady Tawnya Pattie, update volunteer/keeper of the files Rita Churchill and big dreamer/president Arnica Rowan (that’s me!) are off in 3 days for a whirlwind trip to see our charity’s projects in Ethiopia.
We hope you’ll stay tuned and come along for the ride. We will be blogging along the way, and posting at least text and hopefully pictures from our travels.
We have a packed schedule! In just 9 days, we are:
shopping for good to sell at a fundraiser this spring;
visiting our families and friends, as well as our own sponsored children!
If you would like to subscribe to our travel blog posts (there are usually one or two a week, but more while we are traveling,) simply enter your email on the left. You can always unsubscribe when our trip is over.
Feeling generous? Have a laptop you aren’t using much anymore? We are trying to scrounge a useable laptop for our partner, Faya Orphanage, to use doing reports and paperwork for our programs.
If you live near Kelowna (or are willing to send it) and have an extra laptop, please email info@vulnerablechildren.ca
