ECF is a non-governmental organization dedicated to helping those most vulnerable, primarily children without parents. Our flagship program in Ethiopia is its Education & Development Program in Aleltu (EDP), an innovative integrated establishment for the protection and development of highly disadvantaged children and their communities suffering from extreme poverty and social problems. The EDP seeks to provide community-oriented solutions to the challenge of orphans, while simultaneously serving as a catalyst and facilitator for sustainable community development.
ECF is based on values of civic duty, initiative, social responsibility, sustainability, and partnership. We represent a humanitarian and development bridge between concerned individuals, the Diaspora, businesspeople, foundations, philanthropists, and disadvantaged children in Ethiopia.
ECF believes that children need to belong and be a part of family and community life for their long-term emotional and psychological development. We help children at risk of neglect, abandonment, and exploitation by their families and neighborhoods. We do this by providing essential services to children such as early childhood development, good education, primary health care, food supplementation, and life skills, all while requiring that the students live with their nuclear, extended, or foster families to foster community ties. We also do this by supporting and facilitating community development through outreach programs in various areas, including but not limited to health, HIV/AIDS prevention, positive child-rearing practices, environmental conservation, and job training.
FUTURE AND GOALS
1. Child Sponsorships: As a first priority, ECF needs the assistance of individuals, businesses, and other organizations to take up child sponsorships. This is the most direct and affordable route for individuals and businesses to get involved in a modest but meaningful way. Sponsors can choose to have direct relations and correspondence with the assisted children. 45.00 USD per month or 540.00 USD per year for each student provides them with all basic needs.
2. Endowment Fund: The ECF village in Aleltu needs to sustain itself into the future as a platform for various programs. An endowment fund needs to be established to help cover the core recurring costs. ECF needs the assistance of philanthropists, foundations, and businesses to help capitalize such a fund. ECF’s objective is to establish an endowment fund of $2,500,000.
3. On-Site Resource Generation: ECF currently undertakes resource generation activities such as field crop production, horticulture, and dairy production. ECF needs to expand the operation to include other resource generation activities such as milling, honey, poultry production, pottery, and weaving. ECF seeks strategic partners to help develop, strengthen, and expand our resource generation activities.
4. Local Economic Development Program: The poor rural and communities around ECF Village in Aleltu need to be assisted to grow out of poverty through suburban local economic development. ECF seeks an appropriate strategic partner to develop resources and a small business development program for the surrounding communities with ECF. It would also include literacy and other basic life skills programs.
5. Reproductive Health: ECF, in partnership with the community and USAID, has implemented an extensive community outreach and capacity building program in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention. Prevention interventions are focused on youth and undertaken on the basis of baseline research, safe sex practices, consultations with community representatives, and national strategies. Activities involve creative approaches such as peer-based education and workshops. ECF seeks a major HIV/AIDS healthcare corporation as a strategic partner to enable ECF Village to expand its prevention outreach to include assistance for primary health care in the areas of reproductive, respiratory, and intestinal health.
