Local Partner: YETEEM Children & Destitute Mothers Fund

Local Partner Director: Yimer Mohammed, Founder/Executive Director

Area Served: Afar Nomadic peoples, Afar Region of Northeastern Ethiopia and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Program Goal: To provide nomadic peoples in the Afar Region the necessary training, supplies and support necessary to achieve food security and food self-sufficiency. Provide vocational training to empower women in the Afar Region to earn an income, empower mothers to have control over their owe livelihood, properly bring up poor children to self supportive citizen, and renders integrated community based health service to children mothers and adolescent.

Program Services Provided: Food security and food self-sufficiency, water collection and management, health care, computer, sewing and embroidery skills training. Number of Program Beneficiaries: Over 5,000 individuals

Current Needs: Addressing HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other disease in the area; enhancing and strengthening child sponsorship program, women empowerment program, and alternative basic education (ABE) program, and strengthening and expanding its small scale irrigation scheme.

Program Summary: The Afar Region program works with families whose ancestors have lived as pastoral nomads for thousands of years. These families raise and herd cattle and live almost completely off of the milk of their cows. Due to cyclical drought in the region, a lack of food and water for the cattle means less milk for these families. YETEEM recognized that the families needed to learn agricultural skills if they were to have a continual food source and to survive and remain in this region as their ancestors have done.

Change is difficult and takes time; patience and determination are required to introduce new ways of thinking and living to people. It has been a challenge to create a strategy to help the Afar people to live in the twenty-first century while respecting and preserving their local traditions.

The first agricultural program began in 1999 and consisted of 68 acres of land. The program introduced 120 semi-nomadic families to the idea of traditional plough culture and the use of draught and pack animals for improved crop production. In the true spirit of sustainable development, in June 2004 YETEEM handed over the development farm cooperative to the community. A community council of clan and religious leaders continues to oversee the program, while YETEEM continues to lend support when necessary.

YETEEM now works with four Afar communities on similar agricultural programs reaching out to over eight hundred families. In each of these communities, YETEEM works to improve, education, and health care and improve standards of living.

In the capital city of Addis Ababa YETEEM provides vocational training program activities including skills training in computer, sewing and embroidery, child sponsorship, health care, and tree plantation.