Jane's Home in Ethiopia

The first house opens at the Bekoji Children’s Village














See also https://www.standby.me/news/family-homes/the-first-house-opens-at-the-bekoji-children-s-village .

Stand by Me is pleased to announce the opening of a brand new home for orphaned and abandoned children in Bekoiji. The first three children to be welcomed into the home are Miser and her two younger sisters, Meaze and Bogalech. With no parents or relatives to care for them, they had wandered the streets of Bekoiji seeking food, shelter, warmth and the love of an adult, all of which seemed a million miles away.
The great day finally arrived, it was time to move from their temporary home of the last 18 months with its few amenities, no electricity or running water, to their new home. The excitement and joy were overwhelming, the laughter contagious.
A dining room with tables and chairs, bedrooms and bunks, toilets and showers and even running water, glass in the windows and light from a generator. Could this really be home for Miser, Meaze and Bogalech? “Yes”, they were assured by Stand by Me staff and they immediately bounced on their beds.
The three sisters, once so vulnerable, Tilahun, alone in the world, Grace, abandoned on the streets at just three months old and Chaltu along with Corrie, a widow, their loving mum, were home at last. Secure, safe and happy. But this is just the beginning, many other homeless and needy children still wander Bekoiji’s streets, vulnerable, desperately seeking care. We are now busy building two more children’s homes to accommodate children like our first Stand by Me family who are now successfully housed in our first home named ‘Jane’s Home’ after Jane Gilchrist, a lady with a big heart for the children of Bekoiji.














Bethany School, Bekoiji

Jane’s Home

David Spurdle (Director of Stand by Me)
at the opening of Jane’s Home
3rd November 2011

The girls singing!
(How Jane would love this!)

Arebe: A life in the balance

See https://www.standby.me/news/individual-kids-stories/arebe-a-life-in-the-balance for the photo.

Little Arebe Abdo stood quietly by the Bethany School gates in Bekoiji. It was Friday afternoon and home time, but she was not part of our programme. Anxiously she waited for Girma our health worker to leave school and removing her top, she showed him a massive growth on her upper right arm. There was sadness in her eyes as she stood there alone, in pain, hoping for help.
Girma took Arebe to Asala Hospital, just over one hour’s drive away and the decision to operate was taken. Blood was purchased and on Tuesday 20th October 2011 three doctors performed surgery on little Arebe for over four hours. Sadly her right arm had to be removed as the tests showed that the growth was cancerous. Within just a few days, with her pain under control, enjoying good food and constant care provided by our health worker, Arebe is making good progress and is even smiling. We now wait anxiously for news regarding the cancer and pray it is not malignant. Whatever the outcome Arebe will now be cared for by Stand by Me and we will do the best we can to provide love, care, education as well as emotional and medical help. This is just the beginning of our relationship with Arebe. Life for any child in Bekoiji is tough, but for a child with only one arm, the future could be bleak.
Arebe will now be part of our programme. In a town with extremely limited health care, Arebe’s plight further emphasises Stand by Me’s need to extend our health care provision so that sick and vulnerable children like Arebe are cared for sooner. On October 21st 2011 a UK nurse from Northern Ireland will be working in Bekoiji helping to improve our health programme and care for Arebe.
Bekoji


Bekoji is about 100 miles south of Addis Ababa.
It is also just two or three hundred miles west of somewhere Jane lived as a child!
Her father was based in Somaliland with the army in the 1960s, and her brother James (Robs) was born in Hargeisa.
How amazing is that!

In 2005 Kids Alive adopted the Bethany School in Bekoji from a local church that had found itself compelled to provide education for the local children. Despite its great efforts, the church was struggling to educate the 220 students without any resources.

There were two mud-built classrooms for all the children.
There was no water, no loos, no books, no pencils, no food and no smiles.
Kids Alive was struck by the abject poverty and desperate need of the people in this town; no one smiled and we soon realised why.
Children came to school hungry and went home hungrier.
Since those embryonic days five years ago, when we were overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that lay ahead, things have changed. We now have a purpose built school with 330 enthusiastic students and eight new classrooms. Bethany School is a wonderful school where children receive a good education with no more than 35 pupils to a class. Each child has a hot lunch, committed teachers, clean water and educational resources, all of which contribute to a better life and an escape from the hopeless existence the children experienced previously.

Education is an essential tool in the fight against poverty and deprivation worldwide but in a country like Ethiopia, where an estimated seven million children have no access to education, it is of paramount importance. We have since expanded the work and as we have realised the desperate need of 100s more children in Bekoji, we have also opened a children's home in this poverty-stricken town.

A family of three sisters eagerly attended our school, enjoyed their lessons and the care of their teachers, but were returning to the streets at night. One night they were attacked by wild dogs, no one came to their rescue and they spent the night huddled together in fear. After discovering their desperate plight, we placed them in the care of a widow named Corrie, where they now live in a small two roomed house and another two children.
With so many children needing our help, we now have another similar small family home and we are in the middle of our next major project of building two purpose built houses to accommodate these families, with up to 24 orphaned and abandoned children. We want to provide these children with the security of a safe, loving home where they know they are cared for, well fed and have a bright future.

(2010)

In 2011 Kids Alive UK became Stand by Me.
www.standby.me/case-studies/yoseph