The Problem

Alongside the Abebech Gobena children’s home in Addis Ababa, Menschen für Menschen Switzerland also supported the Abdii Borii children’s home in Mettu until 2015. Abdii Borii means “hope for tomorrow” and that is exactly what the home wants to offer the boys and girls who live there. The children’s home provides them with food, clothing and medicine as well as a basic school education. It has been successful, despite the immeasurable social hardship and deprivation in Ethiopia, in creating a place of hope in the Abdii-Borii children’s home:

When you walk through the gate of the Abdii Borii children’s home you enter a place of peace. An avenue of magnolia leads to the buildings; you can see flowers and vegetable beds. And there are groups of children playing, chatting and laughing everywhere. Many have bad memories of families shattered by extreme poverty, of the suffering and death of mothers and fathers who often died after long illnesses. But most of the orphans can’t remember their parents because they arrived in the Menschen für Menschen home when they were still babies or toddlers. They live in groups resembling families in the home, led by house mothers. If you ask the children and young people what they like most about their home, the answers are always the same: community, security – and the chance to learn. And just like all teenagers, they dream about the future.