Year: 2013

Alastair’s Arrival

I’d been to Link Ethiopia’s offices in London to meet their wonderfully enthusiastic and pleasingly easy-going staff twice before setting off for the horn, but really had no idea what to expect from the projects, country or local staff.  Occasionally, ill-formed predictions would swim across my mind, but they were given short shrift; I’ve always …

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Schoolympics!

Nothing brings people together quite like sport, and nothing brings people together from all over the world quite like the Olympic and Paralympic Games. It was in fact the inspiration of the London 2012 games that encouraged Tannery Drift School to seek out links abroad, and through Link Ethiopia, it is now linked with Salem …

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Queniborough Primary School and Yekatit 23 School Link Update

It’s been a successful year of school linking between Queniborough Primary School in Leicestershire and Yekatit 23 School in Bahir Dar. Alongside the usual school linking activities Queniborough and Yekatit 23 have been developing their link through a combination of visits and fundraising. Abundeje Belay arrived on the 27th June for a week-long visit, this …

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Clemy’s Trip of a Lifetime

At the beginning of August, I flew out to Ethiopia as one of fourteen Girl Guides, accompanied by four group leaders. The trip was organised through Girlguiding North East and a few weeks after the selection camp in September last year, I received a letter to say I had been chosen to take part in …

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Emmanuel College in Ethiopia – Hello from Debre Zeit!

Emmanuel College in Ethiopia Friday 13th September Hello from Debre Zeit! We are three students from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, writing this blog from Link Ethiopia’s southern office. We’ve just finished our first year at university and we’re spending our September here in Ethiopia. September in Ethiopia is a very colourful month! It’s coming …

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Electricity, Water & Classrooms for the Andinet Elementary School

This summer Andinet Elementary School has had a well needed refurbishment, with the help of Girlguiding North East whose hard work has improved the quality of education for the 325 children who attend the school. It was established in 1974 and until recently was severely run down. 8 of the 13 classrooms were made from …

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Ten wonderful weeks – by volunteer Grace Mickleburgh

Looking up ‘globalisation’ in any dictionary brings up the definition ‘the increasing interdependence between nations’. It is for this reason that schools, universities and employers encourage travel abroad in order to gain an ‘international experience’ – or to put it more sentimentally, ‘to widen your perspective on the world around you’.  So when I decided …

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Volunteering successes in 2012-13

Link Ethiopia’s volunteering scheme has been running for many years now and a great number of visitors have been able to engage with Ethiopian schools and their pupils over that time. We have no restrictions on age (apart from obvious lower age limitations) and we welcome people from all walks of life – teachers, students, …

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A busy summer: Girl Guides visit Andinet

We had a group of 18 Girl Guides from the North East England region working with us in mid-August for couple of weeks, improving the educational facilities at Andinet Elementary School, in Gondar. The girls helped in refurbishing classrooms, cultivating a vegetable and shrub garden, running a summer camp for the students in the school and …

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Summer of success – Football team takes home gold!

Celebrations are in order for Link Ethiopia’s youngest football team who recently won the gold cup in a local competition proving that all their hard work has paid off. This talented bunch of 10 – 13 year olds have a true passion for the sport, which is evident when you see the level that they are …

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Together We Learn - Ethiopia