I don’t know if you know this, but today is Ethiopian New Year — an important holiday in my culture that holds a deep meaning for me. It’s a day when Christian Ethiopians come together and celebrate the first day of the Julian calendar with food and coffee ceremony, music, arts and crafts, and gift-giving.

My family in Ethiopia will probably spend this special day eating food and getting together with relatives and neighbors. And for me, I’ll be celebrating it here in the States with my friends. While I am grateful that my family and I can afford to do this, this is not the case for all Ethiopians. There are a lot of people in my country who are not able to celebrate in the same way because of famine and high food prices engulfing the Horn of Africa.

It’s hard for me to watch what is happening from afar, but I am doing what I can to help my people. I am collaborating with other Africans living in the States to support Somalia in a project called We Are the Horn, and I am also encouraging people to sign our petition, too. As a member of ONE, you can make a lot of difference in this respect. It would mean so much to me, my family and those affected by the famine if you could add your voice to our petition on this special day:

http://one.org/us/actnow/

Happy 2004 for all Ethiopians and Eritreans out there who are celebrating the new year around the globe.

Bezuayhu parents died when she was a girl, so she stayed with her grandparents. They wanted her to work as opposed to attending school, so she left for the capital city. Unable to find her way in the city as a teenager, the predators of the sex industry brought Bezuayhu the false promise of hope in the form of prostitution. Her life was having to give herself to dirty men for less than a dollar at best, and facing the threat of being beaten and raped as an occupational hazard.

The rehabilitation program that my company, fashionABLE, helps to fund gave her the opportunity to get off the streets, and she took it. When Bezuayhu was 19 years old, we trained her to be a weaver, and now with great satisfaction, she says “I am so proud to be called a scarf maker.”

Giving people the opportunity to earn one’s own income and have a skill has a transforming effect on dignity. I love being around Bezuayhu. She is quiet, strong, humble, noble — the character of someone who has thrived beyond unconscionable circumstances. To those of us who affectionately call her “Bezzy,” she is very much a hero.

This video is a testimony to Bezuayhu’s beauty, and to the transformation that can happen when we give people an opportunity. Watch the video above and see for yourself.

Has Sesame Street taken over Africa? Well, not quite. We previously introduced you to Nigerian program “Sesame Square,” which included an HIV-positive character named Kami. Now, a similar show has invaded millions of televisions in homes across Ethiopia, entertaining children while simultaneously educating them on things like sanitation and hygiene as well as the importance of culture and honesty.

Every day, millions of Ethiopian children sit excitedly in front of their TVs to watch “Tsehai Loves Learning,” a show that features a smiling giraffe named Tsehai who sings funny songs in Amharic, the nation’s official and most widely spoken language.

Through Tsehai’s songs, the children learn important life lessons. Bruktawit Tigabu, co-creator of “Tsehai Loves Learning,” and her husband Shane Etzenhouser, tells CNN, “They don’t realize that they’ve been taught on TV. They’re just having fun, they’re just watching their favorite show but at the same time they’re learning about germs, they are learning about being truthful, they are learning about numbers and knowing their letters and getting ready for school.”

And in Ethiopia, where diseases such as malaria and diarrhea are at the forefront of high child mortality rates, these lessons can also be life-saving. “If they understand what germs are and how they can keep them off, they can stay healthy,” says Tigabu, “If you do it in a way that’s very interesting and interactive for them, then they will do it.”

“Tsehai Loves Learning” has also reached out to children without access to TV through books, community screenings and traveling road shows. And this passion to educate hasn’t gone unnoticed, as the program as won several awards including the “Next Generation Prize” at the Prix Jeunesse International, which honors innovative children’s TV program.

For Tigabu, however, awards are just icing on the cake. “That’s why we want to invest in a young mind, in children with quality education as much as possible and motivate young people to serve humanity with the best knowledge they have and equip them with that knowledge so that they can be empowered to take action in everyday struggles,” Tigabu states, “The key for development in our country is education and focus on our children, so if we have those two going together, we will have a better Ethiopia, better Africa and a better world.”

Dagfinn Høybråten asks questions about health statistics at Adama Udie health post, just outside Addis Ababa

“Vaccines are the heart of our primary care,” Emebet Meshesha, a health extension worker, told me last month when I visited the Adama Udie health post in Ormoia, just outside Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia has made impressive gains with immunization, increasing DTP3 coverage to 79 percent in 2009 from 56 percent in 2000. With 81 million people, the third largest population in Africa, Ethiopia makes a critical contribution to global immunization levels, so it’s an important country for the GAVI Alliance.

Ethiopian health extension worker Emebet Meshesha demonstrates immunization to Dagfinn Høybråten and other visitors at Adama Udie health post

Dagfinn Høybråten and Wubitu Shumi, a mother of five, and Emebet Meshesha, health extension worker, pose for the camera with an immunization certificate

We’ve been supporting Ethiopia since 2002, not just with their vaccines but also with their ambitious development of local health services, including 34,000 locally recruited health extension workers like Emebet. Servicing her local community for more than five years now, Emebet and her partner, Feven Lema, together know all 1,100 households they serve, attending to births, visiting homes, and immunizing children. They were proud to show us their successes.
“People know, from previous experience of epidemics, the importance of vaccination,” Emebet told me.

That is why immunization is such a key part of a 16-element preventive health package, the core of her responsibilities, Emebet said.

Deeply moved by the dedication of these young health workers, who often work day and night, I asked about their motivations.

“I serve my people and my local community,” Emebet told me.

Together we walked to the nearby home of a family of five children, where mother Wubitu Shumi showed us her household’s immunization certificate and a series of sanitation, hygiene and family planning requirements.

Ethiopia’s immunization achievements are worthy of celebration. But with support from GAVI and other partners, Ethiopia is now looking to improve its coverage rates even further, reaching those children in the areas hardest to reach.

They also plan to introduce the new pneumococcal vaccine later this year, helping protect against pneumonia, the world’s largest killer of children. That will add another life saving intervention to Emebet’s health post package.

-Dagfinn Høybråten, GAVI Alliance Board Chair

This is our very first post from ONE’s government relations intern, Zach Kelly. Make sure to give him props in the comments section!

Last week, ONE had the exciting opportunity to partner with the U.S. Department of State to host a luncheon discussion with the African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program.

At the lunch, women from 35 African countries shared their experiences about working in the African business world. Our keynote speaker, Dr. Pearl Alice Marsh of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, provided a congressional perspective of women’s challenges and opportunities and the role they play in commerce and job creation on the continent.

She emphasized that both the public and private sector must make special efforts to remove obstacles that impede the success and growth of African businesswomen because they are proven and effective agents of development in their society.

During our discussion, we learned that African women have difficulties in gaining access to capital and other financial resources when starting and operating a business because of their gender. A participant from Ethiopia said she is working a solution to the problem: partner with other Ethiopian businesswomen to start the first-ever commercial bank owned by a majority of women. This would make it easier for women to access financial capital.

A participant from Nigeria shared her advocacy victory. By teaming up with local cassava farmers in securing assistance and support from the Nigerian government and the USAID, she saved a faltering cassava-processing factory in rural Nigeria. The factory is now fully functioning and ready to supply the beverage industry with glucose-syrup, creating jobs and real economic growth for the area.

These were only some of the amazing stories shared at the event, but each one highlighted the fact that these women are pioneers and leaders in their countries. They are passionate and committed to advancing the role and prosperity of future generations of women in African society, and with the help of global partners and investors, will certainly achieve these goals.

- Zach Kelly, government relations intern, ONE

Coffee is the second most-traded commodity in the world and prized on a multibillion-dollar international market. Yet coffee bean farmers in Ethiopia – the official birthplace of coffee – earn an average of $1 a day, reports the New York Times in a recent article.

However, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, an African-American church in Harlem, N.Y., founded more than 200 years ago, is working to increase these farmers’ earnings. According to the Times, their international aid and development arm, the Abyssinian Fund, is on “a mission to improve the quality of the farmers’ lives by helping them improve the quality of their coffee beans.”

The Abyssinian Fund is the only nongovernmental organization in Ethiopia formed by an African-American church. It was created partly to help the congregation reconnect with its spiritual and ancestral homeland, says the Times. They are working with a co-op of 700 Ethiopian farmers in the city of Harrar.

It seems so simple, but the ability to export better-tasting coffee could help Ethiopia become more competitive on the international coffee market, creating a vital source of income for the country. Once these farmers’ incomes have increased, the Fund will add part of what they make to local development projects like schools and clinics.

This truly sounds like the start of something great. Economic growth, driven by trade and investment, is the engine that will help end poverty and increase employment and incomes.

Read more about the Abyssinian Baptist Church and their Fund in the New York Times.

If you haven’t seen it before, I highly recommend it:

Liya’s Ethiopia Diary from ONE Campaign on Vimeo.

Remember, there’s still time to ask the G8 for a commitment of 3.5 million new health workers for countries who need them, like Ethiopia.

But observers who have been following the election are crying foul, accusing the election of being tainted by “a narrowing of political space and an uneven playing field”. And other groups like Human Rights Watch have accused the government of resorting to voter intimidation and threats to capture the landslide victory.

This is a complex situation. Over the years, Prime Minister Zenawi has delivered real development results for millions of Ethiopians. But the people of Ethiopia deserve to be able to participate in real, meaningful democratic elections that meet international standards. An open and democratic process is a daily process delivered by a free media, free civil society, accountable public institutions and transparent budgets.

We’ll be closely watching the situation as it develops and will keep you abreast of any significant updates.

Women’s stories who suffer from obstetric fistula are always similar; a woman loses her baby in a long, painful, obstructed labor and then wakes up to the horror of incontinence. A woman with fistula is often abandoned by her husband, ostracized by her family and village and left to live the rest of her life alone and ashamed. While fistula can be cured, less than 4,000 women per year can be treated in Ethiopia. And many women who do receive help still live as outcasts from their families or struggle to reintegrate as productive members of their community.

Last year, Allison Shigo and I decided to take action. We launched Healing Hands of Joy, a non-profit to help empower Ethiopian women who have suffered from fistula reclaim hope for their future, reintegrate back into their communities and receive basic maternal health care services for their needs. Our dream is to help eradicate this terrible affliction in Ethiopia, beginning with our pilot prevention project. Through this project, we will begin making motherhood safer by working with the Tigray Government Bureau of Health and training patients at the Mekelle Fistula Hospital. Please visit our website to find out more and see what you can do to help.

-Brett O’Donnell, Co-Founder, Healing Hands of Joy

On the flight back I had a long conversation with another delegation member, who is sort of the ambassador of the Protestant Church to Germany and the EU, about all the everlasting impressions the trip had on us. We could think of so many and I’d like to share some of these with you: