Meet Helen Birhane
We first met Helen in 2006 as we began the summer English program at Hope for Children. Helen, then a friendly 9-year-old, spoke almost no English. From the start, though, you could see the determination in her eyes. That fall we opened the Youth Center at HFC, and Helen became a regular, rapidly progressing up the levels of instruction. You can imagine our pleasure when Helen came running up to us the next summer, exclaiming, “Look, I can speak English now!” And boy could she. The next summer, thanks to a grant from the Batonga Foundation, I was able to tell Helen that we were ready to fulfill her dreams of attending a good private school if she could pass the entrance exams. Not surprisingly, she passed with flying colors. Helen spent the past year at a Quaker school in North Carolina and is now back in Addis completing high school. Due to her excellent results on the national exams, she will be starting university in fall 2012.
Helen’s life has not been easy. She lost both of her parents at an early age and has lived in one of HFC’s group homes. However, despite her hardships, she has tremendous determination and an intense desire to learn. She is living proof of the promise of our Youth Center.
Meet Tadesse Tarefe
Tadesse’s parents died of AIDS when he was just six. Since then, he and his twin brother have lived alone, initially supporting themselves as shoe-shine boys on the street. In 2006 when he was about twelve, Tadesse came to Hope for Children. Thanks to fundraising by the ninth grade class at the Maret School in Washington, DC, Tadesse was sponsored, and he and his brother began attending school full-time, even though they were very far behind.
Tadesse has been a constant presence at Hope for Children’s Youth Center since it first opened its doors. In a letter to the students of Maret, he said of his teachers at the Youth Center: “They reached out to me at a very difficult time when I was about to quit my education. They brought me back to a healthy life. I see them like brothers and sisters, and I want to thank them.”
In 2009, Tadesse scored very well on the difficult 10th grade national exam which qualified him for pre-university study. This was a truly major accomplishment. His extremely high score on the 12th grade national exam two years later qualified him for university study, and he is now a student of engineering at Adama University in Ethiopia. Tadesse – and his teachers - truly deserve our congratulations.
