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By Yelibenwork Ayele - Ethiopian Reporter
16 September, 2007
On the eve of the new year and on Thursday the New Life Community Organization (NLCO) held lunch parties for the old men and women who live in nursing home at Kaliti to celebrate the onset of the third Ethiopia millennium with them.
The money for the millennium celebration parties at the nursing home was sponsored by a woman who lives in Sweden and was celebrating her 70th birth day. According to Genet Loulseged, General Manager of NLCO, the woman chose to receive cash and send it to the old helpless people in Ethiopia so that they too would enjoy the holiday instead of receiving birthday gifts. A big party was thrown and new traditional clothes were bought for every man and woman.
NLCO was founded in September 1994 by Genet Loulseged. Following her 15-year stay in Norway, she came to Ethiopia and was concerned about how people lived in her community in the Gulele sub-city.
Children in that community were not going to school. When Genet asked her neighbors at a coffee ceremony what they would like to have in their community if she secured aid from friends abroad, they told her that they wanted a school for their children. Thus was born the NGO with an initial fund of 500 birr which was used for starting a school accommodating 60 students. The teachers were all volunteers, the class rooms were built with bamboo and had no proper seats. But it was a school anyway.
Now, NLCO has schools in the Gulele, Lafto and Akaki sub-cities accommodating over 3,000 students free of charge and provides them with free food, clothes and health services. It is reaching out for more than 500 young girls in Addis Ababa from low income families screened by the sub-cities administrations, providing them with training in hair dressing, tailoring and food catering. Many of those are now employed and supporting themselves and their family. Recently, the NGO branched out to the SNNPR where it started a school and two vocational training centers in the town of Shone.
It was not Genet's plan that members of her community become dependent on aid from NLCO but become self-sufficient with its help. Therefore, she introduced new programs like credit facilities, especially for mothers, to start their own businesses. This started with 20 women eight years ago but now has grown up to supporting 2,500 mothers benefiting from the facility.
Recently, after entering into an agreement with the Addis Ababa City Caretaker Administration NLCO involved in a renovation project of the houses in which the senior citizens live. These people are too old and too feeble to take care of themselves. The nursing home set aside for them in Kaliti sub-city rests on a large area and has farms in it which are cultivated to produce food to the old who live in it.
The houses, forty years old, can accommodate 150 residents. But they are now in bad shape with leaking roofs and cracking walls infested with lizards and rats. Genet has started the renovation with the large hall in the nursing home premise. As for the residential houses, Genet thinks they should all be pulled down and reconstructed as they do not have strong foundation according to engineers who visited them. The reconstruction is scheduled to start soon.
Currently, about 75 old men and women live in the nursing home. But after the reconstruction, which Genet intends to sponsor, it will be able to accommodate a lot more than 300 people.
The buildings that stand there now are old and occupy a large space. The new buildings however will be constructed with better designs and will have a large living room for the community of senior citizens to gather and be entertained with conversation, music or TV, and for the women to engage in embroidery, cotton spinning, coffee making and so on so that they may not be bored to death sitting idle all day long.
The beds in the houses are forty years old with mattresses worn out, no longer cushioning those that sleep on them. The disabled among the old have no crutches or wheelchairs. "It is not fair that these people live in such discomfort in their old age," says Genet.
"I am now working only on the farm and the reconstruction of the houses. But I am sure that I am capable of working on the food supply and health services as well. After evaluation of my work on these projects, I hope the government will let me do the others too."
Genet says that none of the development works she had been engaged in after coming back to Ethiopia had been easy. She had to face different bureaucratic obstacles and lack of prompt cooperation from government officials especially at the kebele level. "Senior government officials many not be a ware of it but I am facing a lot of problems in my work with sub-city and kebele administrations," she complained.
"They are not cooperative. We had acquired fund from the Japanese government for the construction of a school building at Gulele. But the land the sub city gave NLCO was inconvenient for construction as the whole area was flowing with springs of water. We asked for land in another site, but we got no response. And now we are about to return the fund to the donor because it has been so long since we received it but are not doing anything with it.
"Ethiopians in the diaspora are being called on the undertake investment and development works in their country. I came here with my husband having left a life of comfort and luxury in Europe so that we may contribute to the development of our people in Ethiopia. However, the call for us to invest in our country is not matched by the treatment we are receiving from local officials."
Genet said if the parents' committee were to speak to the kebele then it would accuse her of inciting the community against it. She fears that when higher officials hear of the possibility of the fund returning to the Japanese government unless it is utilized and talk about it with lower officials at the sub-city level, those at the sub-city level would then turn to her with anger. "They would think I was speaking to the higher officials to have them criticized," she said.
She says she had tried even appealing to the mayor's office and writing to the first lady, inviting her to the foundation laying ceremony so that she would have the opportunity to consider our predicament and give solution. However, there was no response. "I employ about 150 people. That is a considerable contribution in terms of minimizing unemployment," Genet said.
She believes that unless prompt cooperation was ensured at the sub-city level, it was no use inviting more Ethiopians in the diaspora to come and work in their country.
"If they extend their cooperation with the construction of the school in which children of that community can learn for free, it is for the good of that community and the country. These officials after all are elected by the people of their community," she stressed.
She asked, "But then, why are they not working for the good of their community? Why do we have to be kept in a waiting list with those who want to build private residential houses?" She indicated that she had waited for over two years to open a vocational training center with 1.5 million birr granted by the GTZ. But there has been no response from the Gulele sub-city yet. "They do not even know where in that sub-city NLCO is located and even if it is an NGO supporting thousands of women and children there," she lamented.