Mt Asheten Primary School, Ethiopia
Donation protected
We - Anna Wilson and Ben Keayes - are hoping to raise money for Mt Asheten Primary School in Ethiopia.
"We are the dreamers of dreams!" Roald Dahl.
Ethiopia is an absolutely extraordinary place.
We found Mt Asheten Primary School next to a take off site, on the top of a huge mountain in northern Ethiopia on a paragliding trip. It has only been there about 8 years and it teaches 250 kids from the mountain top in 4 classrooms. The local community built it themselves.
The students have to come in two shifts as the school doesn't have enough classrooms nor seats to fit the numbers.
There's no running water let alone electricity, no floors, few desks, even fewer materials for learning.
In the early years class, six children share one tiny blackboard divided up into sections to learn the alphabet.
Catch up classes (for kids who miss school due to illness or from having to help with the farming) are held outside under a tree.
Nor can the school teach grade six, the final year of primary school as it lacks the facilities needed to meet the curriculum. After grade five, the students have to go to school in Lalibela, a 1.5 hour walk each way along the cliff top and down the side of the mountain to study.
Ben, whose fitness is really pretty good, sweated up that path with a paraglider on his back one day while the kids danced around him, keeping him company and offering to help carry it as they felt sorry for him!
Sadly, children from the villages are often treated badly in the town schools, and many drop out, leaving without their certificate and missing out on the opportunities that having it could bring.
Yet the school is truly doing remarkable things in a community that until very recently was illiterate and still scratches by from subsistence farming, crops still threshed by hand.
The teachers give their time at weekends to teach the adults of the community, who hadn't had a chance to get any schooling until the school was built. So almost everyone up on that huge hill (with the most incredible view) is learning.
We want to help Mt Asheten buy the materials they need to upgrade the existing four classrooms and add more so that all the children there now and in the years to come can get a solid basic education and the adults too can not only experience the joy and reward of learning but also gain vital skills to help them get by in life a little easier.
We want to make sure they have enough desks and blackboards, to support them in getting running water, to build toilets and handwashing facilities and furnish a basic science lab which means that the grade six students can finish their schooling at Mt Asheten and not walk the 3 hour round trip to the school in town at Lalibela.
One of the reasons why the upgrade will succeed is the energy and commitment of the headteacher at Mt Asheten, Ereda Sisay, pictured here with me down in the town of Lalibela at the bottom of the mountain. He's an incredible young man. This shot also shows the distance from the village to town that the elder students have to walk: Mt Asheten is on that plateau to the right!
This is absolutely a story of celebration, the community, the kids, the teachers are incredible and there's so much energy on that mountain top to make their dreams come true. The local community will do all the work possible on the upgrade themselves, they just need a hand in buying the materials. That's why we're asking here, can you help us get that money together?
The support we've had so far has been incredible. On our flight out of Lalibela, we talked to a young secondary school student from the US, Hermona, who wanted to help. She went back to the east coast of America and held a bake sale at her school that raised $271!
And thanks to the fantastic team at the Mason's Arms, on Cartmel Fell in the Lakes we're holding a Ridiculous Roald Dahl Chocolate Festival there on Saturday 17th September (11:30am to 2:30pm) to raise more funds. If you can come, do! It's going to be scrumdiddlyumptious!
Mt Asheten is a remarkable place with remarkable people. If you feel you can make any contribution, we would be incredibly grateful.
It was dreams that took Ben and I from the Lake District out to Ethiopia in the first place. Paragliding ones! What we found there was incredible. It would be an honour to be able to give something back to a place so wonderful, a place that really does make dreams come true.
Many thanks,
Anna & Ben
"We are the dreamers of dreams!" Roald Dahl.
Ethiopia is an absolutely extraordinary place.
We found Mt Asheten Primary School next to a take off site, on the top of a huge mountain in northern Ethiopia on a paragliding trip. It has only been there about 8 years and it teaches 250 kids from the mountain top in 4 classrooms. The local community built it themselves.
The students have to come in two shifts as the school doesn't have enough classrooms nor seats to fit the numbers.
There's no running water let alone electricity, no floors, few desks, even fewer materials for learning.
In the early years class, six children share one tiny blackboard divided up into sections to learn the alphabet.
Catch up classes (for kids who miss school due to illness or from having to help with the farming) are held outside under a tree.
Nor can the school teach grade six, the final year of primary school as it lacks the facilities needed to meet the curriculum. After grade five, the students have to go to school in Lalibela, a 1.5 hour walk each way along the cliff top and down the side of the mountain to study.
Ben, whose fitness is really pretty good, sweated up that path with a paraglider on his back one day while the kids danced around him, keeping him company and offering to help carry it as they felt sorry for him!
Sadly, children from the villages are often treated badly in the town schools, and many drop out, leaving without their certificate and missing out on the opportunities that having it could bring.
Yet the school is truly doing remarkable things in a community that until very recently was illiterate and still scratches by from subsistence farming, crops still threshed by hand.
The teachers give their time at weekends to teach the adults of the community, who hadn't had a chance to get any schooling until the school was built. So almost everyone up on that huge hill (with the most incredible view) is learning.
We want to help Mt Asheten buy the materials they need to upgrade the existing four classrooms and add more so that all the children there now and in the years to come can get a solid basic education and the adults too can not only experience the joy and reward of learning but also gain vital skills to help them get by in life a little easier.
We want to make sure they have enough desks and blackboards, to support them in getting running water, to build toilets and handwashing facilities and furnish a basic science lab which means that the grade six students can finish their schooling at Mt Asheten and not walk the 3 hour round trip to the school in town at Lalibela.
One of the reasons why the upgrade will succeed is the energy and commitment of the headteacher at Mt Asheten, Ereda Sisay, pictured here with me down in the town of Lalibela at the bottom of the mountain. He's an incredible young man. This shot also shows the distance from the village to town that the elder students have to walk: Mt Asheten is on that plateau to the right!
This is absolutely a story of celebration, the community, the kids, the teachers are incredible and there's so much energy on that mountain top to make their dreams come true. The local community will do all the work possible on the upgrade themselves, they just need a hand in buying the materials. That's why we're asking here, can you help us get that money together?
The support we've had so far has been incredible. On our flight out of Lalibela, we talked to a young secondary school student from the US, Hermona, who wanted to help. She went back to the east coast of America and held a bake sale at her school that raised $271!
And thanks to the fantastic team at the Mason's Arms, on Cartmel Fell in the Lakes we're holding a Ridiculous Roald Dahl Chocolate Festival there on Saturday 17th September (11:30am to 2:30pm) to raise more funds. If you can come, do! It's going to be scrumdiddlyumptious!
Mt Asheten is a remarkable place with remarkable people. If you feel you can make any contribution, we would be incredibly grateful.
It was dreams that took Ben and I from the Lake District out to Ethiopia in the first place. Paragliding ones! What we found there was incredible. It would be an honour to be able to give something back to a place so wonderful, a place that really does make dreams come true.
Many thanks,
Anna & Ben
Organizer
Anna Wilson
Organizer
