Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007
Subject: TTT The Trumble Travels - Project Visits Ethiopia V
The original impetus behind my trip to Ethiopia trip was some meetings about Complimentary Interventions (I’m on a team looking at ways to improve the way Compassion handles this stuff). Complimentary Interventions include “extra” funds that can be requested for a variety of activities not funded by the normal Child Support. This can include things like
Construction of latrines and wells for projects
HIV treatment
Disaster response due to floods, famine, earthquake, etc.
Vocational training for older children in the programs
Resource centers at the projects
Non-Formal educational activities
Major medical expenses
Parental education that will help caregivers as they raise their children
Some of us visited a couple of Compassion projects and saw work that was partially funded through Complementary Intervention funds provided by Compassion.
The first project was project ET-302 where a resource center has been put in place. The church provided the facility and Compassion helped fund the furniture, books, computers, and A/V equipment. This project has had 6 students advance to the Leadership Development Program which is a program for a select few within Compassion’s programs. It is a program that gives an opportunity for leadership training and university scholarships to students who have demonstrated good Christian character, good grades and meet other criteria. Worldwide, Compassion will soon reach 1400 LDP students and 4000 church partners (Ethiopia has close to 100 LDP students and more than 240 projects) so for one project to be the source of this many LDP students is really something. They must be doing something right.
The second project was ET-602 in the town of Arerti. This is the town where the water supply had gone dry (or nearly so) and thus there was no good water source at the church either. A combined effort of funding through Compassion and funds contributed at the local level (perhaps by the local government) allowed for the drilling of a new bore hole to access water. The church benefited by getting water brought right into the church grounds and because there was an existing water distribution system (of sorts) for the town (from the old water system), they were also able to access water from this new source.
Dan and the project director at ET-302
Resource Center
The shelter for the generator located by the bore hole. The generator and the guy who maintains things is inset in the picture (not the inset of me, the other one).
The bore hole location is indicated by the arrow. They had to go down about 160 meters.
Some of the kids at project ET-602. The three on the left are sponsored children. The lady standing behind them in the white is the project accountant. The other lady works in the resource center in this project and this is her neighbor’s child or something.
Dan and the kids
Sponsored child pointing to her picture
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