Written by: Malak Azer I first arrived at the Link Ethiopia office in Finsbury Park, London on July 5th 2016, excited and also a bit nervous to start my six weeks internship. This being my the first internship experience, I had no idea what to expect – hence the nervousness. It did not help that the night before, the discover page on Snapchat had a story titled: ’10 first internship horror stories!’ Being the superstitious Egyptian that I am I…
Written by Zemene. Its not very often that donors to development organisations get to see exactly how their money has been spent, and that’s why I was delighted that young Misha, along with his mother and young brother, were able to come with me to visit Chihira school, in rural Amhara, to see the results of his committed fundraising. Chihira school is only accessible by foot – its about a 45 minute walk from the main road. However, given that…
by Tefera Teklu My favourite subject has always been English. And this was mainly because of my 5th grade teacher, Gashé (Amharic for Mr.) Tariku. He came to replace a fierce teacher, Gashé Shibabaw, who used to beat us, shout or stare at us menacingly for our inability to read. During Shibabaw’s reign of terror, some of us little brats devised a way to avoid his wrath. We persuaded our elder siblings to write the pronunciation for each English word…
Written by Lauren Eliot “I’ve recently returned from a five week volunteering placement with Link Ethiopia, based in Gondar, teaching Grade 11 students at Fasiledes Preparatory School, just outside of town. Before embarking on my journey to Ethiopia, I was anxious and unsure of what to expect from this enigmatic country, but now I can confidently say that volunteering for Link Ethiopia has been a truly memorable and fulfilling experience. Upon arrival in Gondar, I was shown to my volunteer…
An Investigation into the Barriers to Female Education in Link Ethiopia Schools Written by Emily Gretland “Roughly two months ago, with a 20 hour journey ahead, the time had finally come to travel to the Link Ethiopia offices in Gondar to undertake a study and produce a collaborative report on barriers to female education in Ethiopia. Equipped with very limited knowledge of Ethiopian history and culture and zero prior experience with this wonderful country, the thought of the task at…
Written by Laurence Last week we had two fantastic work experience volunteers from our Link schools working with us – PJ from Dr. Challoner’s Grammar School and Frances from Headington School. They both worked really hard to make the most of their time with us, and were a real asset to us as well as great ambassadors for their schools. The following words are theirs and give an insight into how a grassroots education charity operates ‘behind-the-scenes’ and how amazing…
[singlepic id=483 w=320 h=240 float=right]I should travel more. I always want to but my timidity drags me back home. There are goods and bads of travel, before I launch into the good, I want to mention the bad, it’s too easy to skip over them and swoon about how amaaazing a place was when you’re back home. To do so overlooks the boredom, that it’s an effort to talk to people in a stunted language (yours or theirs), sunburn, difficultly…
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 found prediction of all of the complexities of a future experience far more than my feeble imagination is capable of. Following a plane journey that…
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 a community project in Ethiopia arranged by our Ethiopian-born leader, Hannah. The trip sounded fantastic, I had never done anything like this before! I was…
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 to the end of the rainy season so the countryside is vividly green and beautiful. September is also colourful because of its festivities. Wednesday 11th…
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 to spend ten weeks of my summer holiday volunteer teaching in Ethiopia, I’ll admit that I was following the new ‘trend’ or perhaps giving into…
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, retired business people, etc. This last academic year we have hosted nearly two dozen enthusiastic individual volunteers (along with a very large number of volunteer…
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 creating a mural with the school kids. They were busy throughout their days with us in Gondar and have written fascinating blog posts about their…
All our Pembroke College Summer Camp volunteers arrived safe and sound last week in Ethiopia! They will be working with us over the next three weeks, running educational camps for students during their school holiday in three locations: Bahir Dar, Bishoftu and Gondar. Here’s a photo gallery of the team on their 1st day in Bahir Dar, Bishoftu, and Gondar: And here’s a message from our Bishoftu team about their group’s arrival: “We are very excited and proud to welcome…
Link Ethiopia, together with Pembroke College (University of Cambridge), will be running for the first time a number of Summer Camps at various locations in Ethiopia. This is an exciting venture for us with the Cambridge University students who have pledged their commitment to volunteer their services to continue in providing quality education to our students in Ethiopia. The Camps will be running for almost three weeks and will entail daily teaching sessions in Maths, English and Science as well…
