The project titled ‘Books For Primary & Secondary Schools Found in Sidama Region (Mulugeta W/Tsadik, Librarian, Hawassa University), Ethiopia’ _Book For Africa (BFA) & Hawassa University (HU) Partnership Project is one of the partnership projects being carried out by the host of Books For Africa.
Currently we are running fundraising campaign in collaboration with Books For Africa to raise funds internationally on the online Books For Africa Donate to a Project Page officially, in order to directly ship the donated educational books to primary & secondary schools found in the Sidama National Regional State of Ethiopia from the USA.
DONATE NOW ONLINE!
The funds raised are used to ship (freight cost) the donated educational books directly to Ethiopia from the USA via Books For Africa & Hawassa University International Partnership Project to Empower Girls & Boys in the Sidama Region of Ethiopia… CLICK on the below link…To DONATE ONLINE NOW!… https://www.booksforafrica.org/donate/donate-project/ethiopia/books-for-hawassa-university.html
We invited all interested philanthropic individuals, diaspora community, investors, potential donors, and international grant donors, foreign embassies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, international, federal, regional, and local governmental organizations, and non-governmental development & charity organizations at the home and international levels.
Your donation will have an important impact on Primary & Secondary School Students/Girls & Boys in the Sidama Region of Ethiopia and will be used to improve the quality of education in primary & secondary schools.
The funds raised are used to ship (freight cost) the donated educational books directly to Ethiopia from the USA via Books For Africa & Hawassa University International Partnership Project to Empower Girls & Boys in the Sidama Region of Ethiopia…
Don’t hesitate to contact us, if you have any queries pertaining to the Books For Africa(BFA) & Hawassa University (HU) Partnership project, please send a message via the below form. You will get an instant response.
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By Mulugeta Woldetsadik, Librarian, BAI-HU Partnership Project Coordinator at Hawassa University, Ethiopia.
Giorgia Cerruti, Partnerships Manager at Book Aid International . London
Book Aid International has donated 3,000 brand new books to Hawassa University & its outreach programs in the Sidama Region of Ethiopia. The donated books are intended to be sent in the next shipment to Ethiopia around the middle of June 2023.
-Giorgia Cerruti, Partnerships Manager, Book Aid International, London
From Hawassa University, one of the partners of Book Aid International in Ethiopia…
I am very pleased to announce to our beneficiaries & audience that on May 25, 2023, I received an interesting work email correspondence from our international partner BAI staff Giorgia Cerruti, BAI Partnerships Manager, which notifies Book Aid International has approved and donated 3,000 books to Hawassa University and its outreach programs in the Sidama Region of Ethiopia.
It is apparent that since 2020 we have been partnered with Book Aid International, accordingly, BAI donation in 2023 is the largest & worthy of book donations to Hawassa University & itsoutreach programs. Particularly, it enables BAI-HU Partnership to reach out to beneficiaries (primary & secondary school students) in rural areas of the Sidama region via outreach programs.
EIU produces a quantitative and qualitative assessment of economic, political and regulatory risks that help our clients evaluate potential shifts in a country’s operating environment. In 2022 the global repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shifted global concerns away from coronavirus-related health issues and towards growing political, security and macroeconomic risks. We expect that ripple effects from the war in Ukraine, global monetary tightening and an economic slowdown in China will weigh on the economy in 2023, with global growth slowing to only 1.6%. This white paper explores some of the risks that could lead to even slower growth, or even, trigger a global recession.
“Books give people power
They provide the information and the inspiration that people like need to build a more equal future. So we work for a world where everyone has access to books.”
-Book Aid International
Hawassa University provided support to primary and secondary schools, colleges, public libraries and prison libraries in Sidama region with new educational books worth 2.9 million ETB via BAI-HU partnership project
The sorting, stamping, and packing of the books donated by BAI have already been completed. Distribution to targeted beneficiaries has been facilitated through the BAI-HU Partnership Project Coordinator, with directions and orders given by an official letter of the HU Vice President for Administration & Students Services, who is an overall supervisor of the BAI-HU Partnership Project.
As Of Shipment 2022 # ETH-BC-016 Books Donated By Book Aid International, the followings are beneficiary Libraries in the Sidama National Regional State, Ethiopia :
#On the Role of Botanical Garden in treating neurologically impaired patients
@The Healing Power of Botanical Gardens: The Psychological and Physiological Consolations of botanical garden, Oliver Sacks, a Neurologist (Physician) and Author
“In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and botanical gardens.”
Those unmatched rewards of botanical gardens, both psychological and physiological, are what beloved neurologist and author Oliver Sacks (July 9, 1933–August 30, 2015) explores in a lovely short essay titled “Why We Need Botanical Gardens,” found in Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales (Book) — He writes:
“As a writer, I find botanical gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and finding ourselves simultaneously calmed and reinvigorated, engaged in mind, refreshed in body and spirit. The importance of these physiological states on individual and community health is fundamental and wide-ranging. In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and botanical gardens.”
Having lived and worked in New York City for half a century — a city “sometimes made bearable… only by its botanical gardens” — Sacks recounts witnessing nature’s tonic effects on his neurologically impaired patients: A man with Tourette’s syndrome, afflicted by severe verbal and gestural tics in the urban environment, grows completely symptom-free while hiking in the desert; an elderly woman with Parkinson’s disease, who often finds herself frozen elsewhere, can not only easily initiate movement in the botanical garden but takes to climbing up and down the rocks unaided; several people with advanced dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, who can’t recall how to perform basic operations of civilization like tying their shoes, suddenly know exactly what to do when handed seedlings and placed before a flower bed. Sacks reflects:
Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in us. Biophilia, the love of nature and living things, is an essential part of the human condition. Hortophilia, the desire to interact with, manage, and tend nature, is also deeply instilled in us. The role that nature plays in health and healing becomes even more critical for people working long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods without access to green spaces, for children in city schools, or for those in institutional settings such as nursing homes. The effects of nature’s qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological. I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the brain’s physiology, and perhaps even its structure.”
“I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and botanical gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, botanical gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations, Washington, DC, 2023…
<< Success is best when it’s shared.>> Howard Schultz
<<An institution of higher education is a partnership among students and alumni, faculty and administrators, donors and trustees, neighborhoods, and more, to build a community – and a culture.>>
Ben Sasse
We will develop dynamic partnerships with organisations that share our vision of creating more equitable access to books.
Book Aid International donated brand new books to promote and implement BAI-HU Partnership Project in Ethiopia. The total estimated value/price of the various donated educational books is ETB 2.9 million …
“We know that everything we do is built on collaboration: with the publishers who donate the books we send, with our many supporters and friends and with our inspirational partners around the world.”
Alison Tweed, Chief Executive Book Aid International
<< Books For Africa is a simple idea, but its impact is transformative. For us, literacy is quite simply the bridge from misery to hope.>> –Kofi Annan, former U.N. Secretary-General…
By this benchmark, reclusive and authoritarian North Korea has the highest prevalence of modern slavery (104.6 per 1,000 population), according to the report.
It is followed by Eritrea (90.3) and Mauritania (32), which in 1981 became the last country in the world to make hereditary slavery illegal.
North Korea, Eritrea and Mauritania have the highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world, according to the 2023 Global Slavery Index, which notes a “worsening” situation globally since its last survey five years earlier.
The report published on Wednesday said an estimated 50 million people were “living in situations of modern slavery” in 2021, an increase of 10 million over 2016 when the problem was last measured.[…]
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Nothing illustrates the violence and intrigue that has engulfed southern Ethiopia like the life of Fekade Abdisa.
A rebel and former prisoner, Fekade has also been called a bandit chief and double agent. Residents say that bloodshed follows in his wake and that his fighters have frequently killed civilians belonging to the Amhara ethnic group, triggering reprisal attacks.
Although he is only one player in a much larger story, his life illuminates the emergence of Ethiopian fighters with shifting, and even unclear, allegiances whose violence continues to roil Oromiya, the country’s largest and most populous region.
The long-running insurgency in Oromiya has been largely overshadowed by the civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, which came to an end with a November peace deal. But the conflict in Oromiya has claimed thousands of civilian lives and fueled an explosive growth in ethnic militias, representing a far greater long-term threat to Ethiopia’s integrity and stability.
Fekade and his Oromo forces have been accused by witnesses of involvement in several mass killings. In the ethnically mixed town of Agamsa, for example, Fekade’s fighters, wearing the long braids favored by Oromo rebels, killed dozens of civilians from the Amhara ethnic group last summer, according to witness accounts that have not been previously reported.
“These were innocent Amhara, our neighbors,” said one Oromo resident. “The blame for what happened afterward is with Fekade.” In a raid by an Amhara militia after Fekade’s forces fled, witnesses said, more than 100 Oromo were killed.
Fekade’s life also highlights why previous efforts to end the violence have failed, amid recriminations that the terms of peace deals were not honored or that disarmed rebels were mistreated. The resulting distrust continues to bedevil new negotiations between the government and the main armed group in Oromiya — the Oromo Liberation Army. The latest talks, which ended in Tanzania this month, established a rapport between the two sides, but the OLA rejected the government’s request for a cease-fire because the group wants its political demands addressed and a framework for implementation, an OLA official said.
Fekade was not represented at the talks.In a rare and lengthy telephone interview just before they began, he said he is fighting for the rights of the Oromo people against discrimination by the central government and by Amhara militias. He denied allegations that he is a robber, a kidnapper or an agent provocateur and said his fighters did not kill any civilians during the bloodletting in Agamsa last summer, contradicting the accounts provided in interviews by a dozen witnesses from both ethnic groups.
“We are fighting alongside our people,” he said. “We do not attack innocent civilians. … This is a complete lie.”
The Ethiopian national security adviser, justice minister, and regional president and police chief did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Political leaders in the fertile southern lands of Oromiya have long resented what they describe as discrimination and the historic domination by northern highland elites. Oromo rebels have been fighting Ethiopia’s central government for decades.
Fekade said in the interview that he joined the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in 2000, when he was 18. About a decade later, he received roughly six months of military training in Eritrea, Ethiopia’s small but heavily militarized neighbor, he recounted, a story confirmed by two other OLF members. He said he reentered Ethiopia to bomb government targets but was captured in 2012 shortly after he returned.
Over the next few years, Ethiopian prisons swelled with militants, journalists and protesters, including tens of thousands of Oromos. The turmoil triggered a state of emergency and in 2018, the prime minister resigned. The ruling coalition replaced him with former spy chief Abiy Ahmed, whose father is Oromo.
Abiy released tens of thousands of prisoners, including Fekade and his cellmates. Abiy undid bans on dozens of political parties and armed groups, including the OLF. About 1,300 armed OLF fighters traveled from Eritrea to formally lay down their arms. Then things started to go wrong.
The OLF fighters were denied vocational training and other help they had been promised, said Batte Urgessa, a spokesman for the group. He said many escaped and joined a faction that had refused to renounce armed struggle, calling themselves the Oromo Liberation Army. The Oromiya regional spokesman said that there was no such deal and that the OLF was invited back to participate in “peaceful political struggle.”
Fekade said he briefly joined these fighters when he was released from prison but surrendered as part of a second deal.
Eventually, Fekade returned home to Wollega, east of Addis Ababa. A half-dozen residents there said Fekade’s group began to demand money and livestock, claiming he was fighting for their liberation. Seven families said his fighters kidnapped their relatives for ransom. Residents said his men sometimes fought the OLA, headed by commander Jaal Morro, but rarely engaged government forces.
Fekade “was saying he was OLA and doing things that made people hate the OLA,” one resident said. “But he was also fighting the OLA.”
Fekade strongly denied committing crimes, saying “there is nothing that we take by force.” He told The Post he is an OLA commander, although he does not answer to Jaal Morro. The OLA said he poses as an OLA commander but cooperates with the government.
In 2021, Ethiopia held national elections. Major Oromo opposition parties withdrew from the polls after their offices were burned down and many members were arrested. Several Oromo leaders were detained. Violence surged anew, often along ethnic lines.
In Oromiya, many of the victims have been Amhara, members of Ethiopia’s second-most-populous ethnic group. Many Amhara had settled in Oromiya during the droughts of the 1980s, but some Oromo leaders began saying Amhara should leave. Armed Amhara formed militias. Some argued parts of Oromiya rightfully belonged to them.
The town of Agamsa is about five miles south of Oromiya’s border with Amhara. Fekade’s forces were a short walk away from Agamsa when security forces under the Oromiya regional government pulled out on the evening of Aug. 28. Amhara and Oromo residents said in interviews they begged the soldiers not to leave, fearing a massacre. They were right.
Hours after the regional forces left, witnesses said, they saw Fekade arrive with his men.
Four Oromo witnesses said they had seen five to 18 Amhara killed by Fekade forces. Five Amhara residents said the total was higher — about 50 people in the town. The victims included a monk and a nun. An Amhara teenager described how her father was shot dead as she hid in the bathroom.
“This was an attempt to start ethnic killings,” an Oromo resident said.
Fekade denied his forces killed civilians and said all the dead were armed Amhara. He said he gave a speech encouraging Amhara and Oromo people to live together. He said he escorted a group of Amhara residents to safety, which was confirmed by both sides.
Next, Fekade’s forces ordered Oromo men to assemble in the local primary school and confiscated their weapons, six witnesses said. Fekade confirmed he had disarmed Oromos he thought might oppose him.
Accounts differ about what happened next. Amhara residents said an armed Amhara rescue party arrived the next day from a neighboring town and engaged Fekade’s forces. Oromo townspeople, however, said that Fekade’s forces ran away as the Amhara forces arrived and that Amhara gunmen killed more than 100 civilians, including children and the elderly.
“When I realized they were going for men, I left my wife and two kids,” recalled an Oromo survivor, who said he saw people hacked to death. “I kept running so instead of being dismembered, I thought I’d rather get a bullet.”
After the slaughter, activists for each side blamed the other.
Witnesses have also said in interviews that Fekade and his forces participated in the killings in the nearby towns of Jartege Jarte and Kiremu that provoked retaliatory raids by Amhara fighters. Fekade denied any involvement.
The United Nations says that a half-million Amhara have fled the violence in Oromiya and that an unknown number of Oromos have been displaced.
Fekade was unreachable when The Post tried to contact him for comment on the peace talks. But an OLA operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed hope they might leave no room for Fekade to operate.
Fekade “might transform into a local gangster. But it will be easier for the government to hunt him down,” the operative said.
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