All this in 9 Years! HFC Celebrates!

Hope For Children celebrated its 9th Anniversary this Saturday with over three and a half hours of singing, dancing, speeches, dramatizations and exhibits. Hundreds of children, HFC supporters and staff crowded into the Headquarters courtyard to sit under the tent, along the walls, on the ground, just about anywhere there was an inch of space.

In just 9 years, Yewoinshet (aka Woiny) has created 12 group homes for AIDS-affected orphans as well as found sponsors for over 800 orphans. That alone would be a huge accomplishment for a 9-year old organization, but in addition, Woiny has founded a Youth Enrichment Center, a nursery school and two kindergarten classes, a Hospice for those extremely sick from AIDS and tuberculosis, the first play therapy and counseling center in Ethiopia and an Unban Agriculture program to train people in the crowded homes of Addis how to grow some of their food in any available container they can find.

HFC also runs a scholarship house that allows high schools graduates to attend nursing school or other vocational schools, sponsors training programs in healthy psychological ways of parenting for hundreds of parents and teachers, and has brought in psychological training for both their staff members as well as other therapists throughout the capital. HFC is now expanding their counseling services into three schools and is raising funds to set up the first school in the AIDS-infected community of Entoto.

Whew! It is exhausting just listing the projects and hard to imagine how one woman can oversee them all. I have grouped the celebration pictures at the end of this blog entry and you can see by the bright eyes of the children how much they have received. The number of people who stood up to give testimonials about how Woiny and HFC had changed their lives went on for quite awhile, and even though they were delivered in Amharic, you could tell by the tears, the gratitude and the joy that more lives than can be imagined have been rescued by this incredible woman and the selfless HFC staff.

Catherine and I were among the honored guests, along with 23 optometrists from Canada who had come for the week with 9000 pairs of classes, and Colin, a wonderful man from Vancouver who has been one of HFC’s longest and most generous donors. Our laps were seldom empty and as soon as a child left to dance or roam, another one would take his or her place. Like all children, they want to both give and receive affection. One particularly loving girl, after snuggling for quite awhile on my lap, ripped a small bead off her prize beaded shoe and handed it to me as the only gift she could think of to offer me.

With a few simple decorations, singing, dancing and testimonials, HFC put on a celebration that has topped any other I have ever attended in both sheer joy and gratitude.

Dorothy 

Here are a few of the pictures from the celebration.