Meet Rani

 Meet Rani.....

Rani Solomon is an only child and is 8 years old. Rani lives in the Gesda Tesfa community in Dire Dawa Ethiopia. This village is a very poor village and many people are forced to beg for food and money as a means of survival.As a young child Rani witnessed her alcoholic father beat her mother. The domestic abuse continued until Rani’s mother left and moved into her parent’s house and began selling bread to make a living to support her and her daughter. When Rani turned 3 years old her mother died, since then she has lived with her grandparents who are 65 and 50 years old.

                                     Rani and her grand parents outside their house

When she was 6, Rani registered in the nearby school but her grandparents could only afford to send her for 3 months as the only income they have is her grandfather’s pension which is not enough to support a whole family. Their living circumstances forced Rani to drop out of school and to work to help support the family. Rani helps her grandmother clean houses, fetches water for the family and other household chores.

In August 2011 Rani was selected to benefit from the Youth Release Program, located in the Gesde Tesfa area. The project provides psycho social and education support to marginalized and vulnerable children. Through this program Rani is able to attend school and is benefiting from other services being offered by the program such as tutorial support and educational support. Rani's Grandparents feel that the project is benefiting Rani in many ways; she is receiving educational  support, school uniform, free health care services, tutorial class and, psychosocial counseling. These services are beyond the reach for this family.According to Rani's Grandmother ' if the project was not providing educational support for Rani, she would stay out of school for another year, if not longer'

Rani doing her homework

If you would like to learn more about Youth Release's work in Ethiopia please see www.youthrelease.com

Making Progress

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Making Progress

In August we brought you the amazing news about the opening of the Youth Release youth center in Dire Dawa. I am sure you are wondering what happened next? Now that the doors are open what happens? Opening a youth center in Ethiopia is no easy task but we have a great team on the ground who have helped us put it all in place. Our local team worked with the government and local community leaders to select the most vulnerable children in the community. By most vulnerable I mean children who have never had schooling, whose parents have died, children who work to survive and children who need support.

By the end of August, 250 children were coming to the youth center. For many of these children, it was the first time they had a place to go where they could meet friends, play and just enjoy being kids. Our team introduced them to a number of new games like cat and mouse, duck and goose and other children's games. For the first week , the children played games and got to know the staff at the youth center.

In September each child was registered, this is an essential part of the project so that we know what children attend on a regular basis and their background information. September was very exciting for a lot of these children, each child that attends the youth center is given the necessary school materials so that they can attend our non formal education classes. Each child receives an equal amount of supplies so that each child is equal to the next and no child feels left out! For many of the children we work with, this is the first time they will have basic school supplies to call their own! It's safe to say there were smiles all round.

Next step is to start vocational training for the older kids and start counselling services for all kids. It is important that we do this slowly and don't overwhelm the children. We are making great progress and most importantly the children are receiving schooling and much needed support. Just look at their happy faces!

*If you would like to help us support these children, we are looking for volunteers to do a sponsored Christmas day swim, if you are interested please email youthrelease@gmail.com or face book us!

www.youthrelease.com

We finally have our Youth center

Monday, August 29, 2011

We finally have our Youth center

On august 1^st 2011, the doors of the Youth Release youth center were finally opened. It was a long road but finally after lots of hard work and determination we got there, and now our dream of providing much needed services to the children who need it most, is being realized.

We have taken over an old leprosy clinic that is located in Gende Tesfa community or in English the village of hope. This building is in great condition and has huge potential. There are six big rooms that will be used for classrooms, an office, play areas, and places for the children to relax, and lots of space outside for the children to be able to run around and have some fun.

All the money that has been raised will be used for the running of the programs at the center. These include, skilled training, tutorial class support, health awareness groups, circus groups, a library as well as life skills training, psychosocial counseling and recreational activities. In addition to this we will be offering a child sponsorship program at the centre to the most disadvantaged youth as well as an Orphaned or Vulnerable Children (OVC) training program for street kids who have not afforded the luxury of full-time education. The amount of kids that can be sponsored is dependent on the amount of donors. The cost will be 230 euro per annum.

The area we are working in has the highest ratio of Orphaned or Vulnerable Children in Dire Dawa. There are just under 4,000 registered OVC's, that doesn't include the number of street children, or migrating children. There is likely to be a greater influx of children coming from neighboring Somalia as well as rural areas where the food crisis is prevalent. Needless to say, the children certainly need our support, and we are finally able to get somewhere with what we set out to do.We are starting small with the number of children being supported at 200 but we hope to expand our services and programs in the coming year and also help more children.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported this project from day one and for supporting us to keep believing it would happen. To be honest I think we are all still a bit in shock that it’s real :)

We still have a long way to go, and there is still a lot of work that needs to be done, but for now we have our building, children are benefiting from our programs, I think we’ve done what we’ve set out to do, from here on in, it can only get better, thank you all for making it possible!

www.youthrelease.com