Link Ethiopia’s Annual Report for 2011-2012 was recently published and we are really pleased to share it with you.
During the year we made great strides forward in our work. We undertook a growing range of activities, from delivering improved facilities, resources and teaching to more Ethiopian schools and pupils, to enabling students in different continents to learn about each other and to share their aims and aspirations. We could not have done any of this without your help. Thank you for joining with us to ensure quality education is available to all children in Ethiopia!
Here are some very brief highlights of the year…
School linking
We now support 157 school links which is an increase of 65% on the previous year.
We worked with 111 primary school links and 46 secondary school links to develop their partnerships. We helped them to set up exchange visits, produced termly resource packs on global issues relevant to both countries and facilitated exchanges of letters and of shared learning activities around these themes. This year our linking theme was the Olympics and many schools exchanged ideas related to the Olympic theme of ‘hopes and aspirations’.
Child sponsorship
During the year we increased the number of sponsored children we support by 87%, to 144. Our sponsorship work now spans 14 schools in the north and south of the country. Sponsorship clubs are being established within each school as part of a review of the support we are giving to sponsored pupils and once this has been completed we will be launching a drive to find new sponsors to join the programme.
Volunteer teaching
The volunteering scheme remains popular and caters for a wide range of ages and talents. During the year 21 volunteers taught in Ethiopia, primarily focussing on the teaching of English Communication Skills to secondary school students but also helping with computer training, sports coaching and giving teachers English tutorials.
In total these volunteers taught approximately 3,100 hours of lessons to approximately 1,000 students. There were fewer volunteers when compared with the previous year and we really want to find more! Get involved?
Projects
2011-12 has been an exciting year where we continued striving to enable all of our schools to deliver quality education for the needs of their community. We raised 33% more for projects in the north and south of Ethiopia and below are just a few highlights.
Donkey library expansion – we funded two mobile libraries serving 11 schools in rural areas in the north of Ethiopia.
Sports and community programme – we provided accredited football, basketball, volleyball and handball training for students in 7 schools, sports equipment for 7 schools and sports kits to students in 5 schools.
St George’s School – work began on a flagship project in Azezo, a new non-profit school to support orphans and vulnerable children.
World Challenge projects – 7 educational expeditions enabled the building and stocking of a big library, a new water project, a new toilet block, and several gardening, painting and decorating initiatives.
Tour d’Afrique – the second visit by Tour d’Afrique cyclists enabled educational resource packs to be given to 104 students along with 10 bicycles to local schools.
As well as delivering…
- Eight water and sanitation projects
- Two toilet cleaning projects
- Five classroom and furniture projects
- Six books and library projects
- Two football teams sponsored
- Two laboratory equipment projects
- Two technology projects
- Four teaching resources and teacher training projects.
Future projects:
In 2012-13 we plan to build on our projects work with a greater focus on developing more multi school projects, focusing on specific themes. These themes will continue to address blockages to the provision of inclusive, accessible quality education. Projects being planned include a package of support for disabled students, improved literacy in elementary schools, and initiatives to retain more girls in education. We are also seeking to work more with local and international partners in the planning and delivering of these programmes. Our local teams will be providing increased support to schools in Ethiopia to generate more local contributions to projects in order to increase the feeling of ownership and to help towards cost increases.
Income
Thanks to your amazing support we raised a record £206,496:
Expenditure
Here is how your donations were used to support education:
Read the full report
You can download the full report here, and you can browse through it without downloading below (click in the middle to view it fullscreen). Enjoy!
(PS – if you don’t see anything above, your browser doesn’t have the Adobe Flash plugin. You can get it here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/)
Thank you!
Thank you so much for your support during the year! We feel incredibly fortunate to work with so many people in so many countries who all share the same vision of improved education in Ethiopia. Here’s to the future and what we can all achieve together!
The Link Ethiopia team.