This editoral appeared in The Rocky Mountain News on March 28, 2008.

In the recent article, “Anschutz’s $23 Million Tops Donors in Colorado,” Joanne Kelley, the Rocky Mountain News philanthropy reporter, listed the major givers in Colorado. She noted that while Phil Anschutz gave $23 million to charitable causes, Marvin Caruthers gave $20 million and Tim Gill $11million, the “affluent, particularly those worth billions of dollars, give away far less than they can afford.”

I have not found that beating people over the head is a particularly good motivational tactic. To me it is amazing that millionaires and billionaires give so much to philanthropic causes. Rather than focus on the philanthropic defects of the rich and famous, let’s celebrate the fact that last year, Americans at every income level combined donated more than $250 billion dollars to our nation’s 1.4 million nonprofit organizations.

I believe that instead of decrying the philanthropists we already have, Colorado can lead the way to a new spirit of philanthropy—one that includes the moviegoers as well as the opera patrons. United Way of America started right here in Denver, when in 1887 the first dean of Saint John’s Cathedral, along with Monsignor William O’Ryan of St. Leo the Great Catholic Church, the Reverend Myron W. Reed of the 1st Congregational Church, and Rabbi William S. Friedman of Temple Emanuel, had an idea that by coming together to raise money as a community they could achieve more than with many separate appeals. Their unique “Denver Charity Organization,” renamed The United Way, is now one of the largest charitable fundraising organization in the world.

The question for me is: How can we make philanthropy the catalyst for change? I believe we must start by changing our definition of philanthropy. Independent Sector’s most recent study on Giving and Volunteering in the United States notes that “giving in Hispanic culture takes place primarily within the network of church, family and friends” rather than to institutional charities, accounting for the fact that statistically Latinos have lower levels of giving to organized philanthropy than the non-Latino population. It turns out that most Latino people subscribe to the notion that charity really does begin at home—and at church, at school and in the neighborhood. Rather than send in a check to Food Bank of the Rockies, a Latino philanthropist is more likely to simply stop by with a basket of food for a neighbor who has just lost his job, or offer to run errands for a couple whose child is ill in the hospital.

Isn’t the person who checks on his frail, elderly neighbor a philanthropist? The person who volunteers to coach soccer? The person living on a fixed income who writes a $10 check? We can all be philanthropists, and we need to recognize and applaud the tremendous difference we are making to change the world, one person at a time. Why do we need to wait for a tsunami or a hurricane? Let’s figure out ways to be proactive—before tragedy hits home.

How do we take the inherent goodwill of the American people and harness it into a force for positive change? Several leading philanthropic institutions, including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in its Emerging Philanthropies in Communities of Color initiative, are studying ways to tap into the informal but extremely generous network of individual philanthropists.

There is a lot that organized philanthropy can do to encourage individual philanthropists in Colorado. The Rose Community Foundation and El Pomar Foundation already have wonderful programs that inspire and support high school students to raise and then give away money. The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County has developed a 12-week curriculum for elementary school children on the importance of giving back, how to volunteer and raise money, how to research nonprofits and how to have impact. Last December, 4^th and 5^th graders in Bixby School’s student council had to make a tough choice between the Humane Society and Children’s Hospital, but after much discussion finally decided to donate their $1,000 of collected pennies to purchase an Art Cart for the new Children’s Hospital. The foundation program has so far graduated 240 young philanthropists and more schools are signing up for the program.

Our young people are ready and eager for leadership, each one of them a budding philanthropist and change agent. The idea that Barack Obama is running a “movement” rather than a political campaign has come in for some sarcasm from the pundits, but we have seen more young people involved in this election than in the past 50 years. In Colorado, schools and churches had lines winding round the block on caucus night. Senator Obama has been able to touch a point deep inside people that brings hope and inspiration.

The philanthropists are ready and waiting. Will some more leaders please step forward?

I am flying out of Addis Ababa this evening for the US and want to write my last email partly about my week in the coffee growing/jungle area of Southern and Southwest Ethiopia and my final thoughts on leaving this wonderful country and this incredible experience I have had during the past three weeks.

Most of the past week was spent in Southern Ethiopia in the towns of Jimma (the capital city of the Kaffa region) in the birthplace of coffee. I also spent time in Bonga and Chira that are smaller towns and villages. My hosts for this visit were the Catholic Secretariat that has a series of schools, health care clinics, programs for women, economic development activities where they provide coffee plants for farmers and help with forming coffee growing cooperatives.

This area is the most beautiful area of the country where hunger (because it is in the jungle and gets plenty of water) is not an issue. Inside the compound where I stayed with the Catholic priests we picked guavas, mango, papaya, banana, vegetables. There are coffee plants everywhere and they roasted coffee for our drink at breakfast. The area is all jungle and with incredibly green hills and thick with plants, trees and animals. We saw moneys and baboons everywhere we went and there are many lions in this region. Hunger is not an issue because people could grow whatever they need for food, but once you get past the hunger issue poverty is just as rampant here as anywhere in the country.

We had to drive 4 hours in a Land Cruiser over mountains and jungles to get to the small town of Bonga where I stayed for three days. In the early morning we drove through dirt roads with the priests to a small town called Chiri and had two interesting experiences with mission programs of the church. One was a health care clinic that was started by American’s who live in Colorado and the Catholics are very involved in supporting the clinic. This is the only clinic in this area of 20,000 people and I met with the medical staff. The medical director is a physician assistant from the United States (Long Island) who has been working in different third world countries for the past 20 years. The clinic provides the most basic of health care. The laboratory had a microscope and a few vials. I walked into the isolation ward and the door was wide open and saw one women lying on a bed. There were dozens of people waiting outside of the compound waiting to be seen and many have to wait a day or two to be seen by the medical staff. The medical director, Steve, was telling me about their outreach programs into the rural areas where they have to walk days thru jungles to traditional tribal villages. He was telling me that he just got word that in one village 74 people just died primarily from parasites and bacteria in the water and other infections that compound themselves over time. Almost none of the water is treated in any way. Clearly this clinic would not pass inspection with Kaiser Doctors, but it is the best they have and provides incredible service. There was no electricity at all and generators are the only way they get power. The medical staff is providing me with a list of drugs and equipment that are critically needed to treat the people.

After this appointment the priests took me to a school that I will never forget. This is a public school in a very small village that 2,300 kids attend. As soon as I walked thru the gates I was inundated and surrounded by over 200+ kids looking at me and wanted to communicate with me. I asked the head of the school to show me a classroom and I walked into this room with dirt floors and 40 desks with two students per desk. The only light coming into the classroom was from the opening where the students walked into the classroom. There was a blackboard and the students did not have any textbooks. I started to communicate with one of the students and asked to see her homework assignment. This was a mind blower. She showed me her writing in English and her math. The writing was in perfect English and the math was accurate. It was so sad to see the thirst for learning and how unbelievably attentive the kids were and how little they have to work with. It was very sad for me. Everywhere I went in the country, the kids were so hungry to learn, but had little materials and textbooks available.

Another experience I had was when the priests took me to see a government official. There is a tiny town called Mutti (it has a few thousand people) that is 14 K from Chiri where the closest high school was located. There is no road from the elementary school in Mutti to Chiri( where the high school is) and kids have to walk 14K every day to get to school through the jungle. There is only small path winding thru the jungle that takes them to school and back every day. In many cases, the mothers don’t want to send the girls to school because they get raped and kidnapped by the boys who take them for their wives beginning at the young age of 11 or 12 years old. So the government has paid for a study for the costs of this dirt road to open up the town and allow the children to attend middle and high school. This is a project the priests and the community very much want me to help with. The costs for this road are about $500,000 USD for the 14K stretch.

It was fascinating being in the jungle and we drove back to Jimma( to catch my plane to Addis) in the rain in a land cruiser that did not have windshield wipers. The drive took about 4 hours. I had a quick lunch at the Catholic rectory and got a phone call from Ethiopian Airlines saying my plane was cancelled and I had to get to the airport immediately to make another plane they were sending down from Addis. I had the priests drop me off at the airport and after going thru extensive security searching we waited for the plane to arrive. Then another group of people, mostly Moslems arrived that were flying to a small town near the Sudan ( a very high risk security area) and there started to be a fight between our group that was flying to Addis and this group that was going to an areas near Gambella ( western part of the country). Eventually the Addis group won out and we got on this little prop plane with canvas seats and flew up to Addis. I did not hear what happened to the other group. Apparently this kind of thing happens quite often as Ethiopian Airlines is the only plane service inside the country and if there is not enough traffic on scheduled flights they have been known to cancel or change flights around.

Yesterday morning,. Sabbath, we drove to the Mother Teresa Orphanage that was an unforgettable experience. We met with Dr. Rick Hodes who Daniel and I have gotten friendly with and he takes care of the severely disabled children at the orphanage on Sabbath in addition to his regular job of being the medical director for about 10,000 Ethiopian Jews that are waiting to immigrate to Israel. They must have about 500 children and adults staying at the orphanage and it are a remarkable place. It is bright and seems like a very decent place for the kids. Daniels talked about his experiences there, but it is a place you can’t forget and it is almost impossible to be there without tears in your eyes. I was so proud to know someone like Rick who was conducting grand rounds with children who had severe spinal cord injuries, tuberculosis of the spin, kids whose knee’s were near their waist and other deformities. Rick has also adopted 8 of these children that were his patients and another 5 or 6 live with him at his house in Addis. He is a remarkable human being. There are about 8 of the Mother Teresa Orphanages throughout the country and they provide a tremendous service to not only the thousands of children that are orphaned or abandoned because of the parents dying of AIDS or financial reasons. The lucky one’s get adopted by parents from Western countries.

DEPARTING THOUGHTS ON ETHIOPIA
I want to write a few thoughts on the country and people as I am leaving this experience after having spent three weeks in Ethiopia. Let me start off with an interesting conversation I had with an extremely intelligent man who lives in Ethiopia and who was educated in the West. Let me go over some ideas to begin to look at this country.

The history of this continent has been one of colonization from European countries and Ethiopia was the only country in Africa that was not colonized except for a few years by the Italians during World War II. He feels that that there is a total need to control the citizens of Africa and Ethiopia and that is a very high priority for the governments in Africa. It is curious when I was looking for presents to bring back to the states the quality was not very good of things made in Ethiopia. He was talking about Ethiopia has not produced significantly great art, literature, writing, and other creative endeavors. Many times people are suffering so much that they don’t strive for excellence or quality. The focus is on survival. Even wealthy people don’t strive for excellence. The educational focus in Ethiopia is to have classrooms and schools and not quality education. Students are learning by rote and are not developing much creative work. Literature and arts are not given in the schools. Students do not read Shakespeare. In other countries that have been colonized the ruling counties in Europe have developed a culture and these countries, such as Ghana, Kenya and others have developed in ways that Ethiopia has not. Perhaps that is the good part of colonization. Driving through the rural areas, people are still living a peasant culture using all animals and hand tools probably similar to the days of Solomon and Sheba. The ox and plow were the only instruments I have seen in the fields throughout the country.

Ethiopia has been the recipient of billions of dollars of aid from Western countries for the past decades and has it made a difference? From a humanitarian standpoint it has certainly helped people live and stay alive, but it has created a feeling of dependency on the part of its people. They are looking to the West and others to give them hand-outs rather than hand-ups.. People are created by the culture and the culture creates the people. The mentality seems to be not to break out and excel but to do what is expected to survive and take care of your family. The breaking out of the mold comes when some people are lucky enough to leave for America or the West. The society is pretty closed and there is a lack of trust among people who are not your family or close friends. The churches seem very rigid and are not actively involved in the community or helping people with food, employment, health care but are concentrating on the spiritual side of the person. Millions of burr are raised each year for churches and mosques, but little seems to be coming down from these institutions or the government for housing, health care, education, revenue enhancement, etc.

It seems that part of this culture is a LOCKED society. Addis is a city where trust is a foreign concept. People lock everything. In Yohannes home, the gates to the compound are locked, when we leave the car in the compound the car is locked, even when people sleep they lock their door to the bedroom.. This is also true with the nonprofits or NGOs I consulted and trained. People were trusting of me, but not themselves. This is a new concept to share information, to network and trust each other. However, with NGO’s it is critical when you form coalitions, associations and alliances that you trust the other person to work together. This will take a decade or a generation( or more) to break out of this pattern.

However, the GOODNESS of the people was remarkable. It is easy to focus on the poverty, desperations and survival for 80% of the 80,000,000 people in this country. It is too easy to focus on the issues of control, the locked society, the guns and the military, but what about the people. How does this government and its priorities impact the daily lives of its citizens? How did I find the people I met with, and worked together, shared dinner and coffee with? I found the people, especially the children to be warm, loving, and kind. Ethiopians are physically beautiful people and as my son Daniel said these are the largest number of “stunning girls and women I have every seen”. I have to agree with him. I went to an adoption agency to check on a child that a Jewish couple in Denver will be adopting in March. The baby was 8 months old and was abandoned in the southern part of the country by the Kenyon border. This baby was one of the most beautiful infants I have seen and he was one of the lucky one’s. People cared for him with love. Because of the poverty and stress that people feel that must be hundreds of thousands of children that are abandoned or orphaned.

There is a lot of love and caring in this country and the hospitality that was extended to me was very special. Everywhere we walked people touched and held each other and it is a very physical society. In many ways people seems happy to have what they have, but were reaching for more without the tools necessary to live a plentiful, happy and healthy life. This is the challenge for the people and the government of Ethiopia and the rest of the world.. I believe that Ethiopians want exactly what people in the US have, and it is the responsibility for all of us to see that we live in a global society and it is the responsibility of ALL OF US to realize we are dependent upon each other to create a world of love and caring. It takes the world to create and make a village.

The following story is written by Rich’s son, Daniel, who went with Rich to Ethiopia. Rich and his wife wanted to share the story:

Friday night my dad and I had a Shabbat dinner we will never forget. But let me tell you, this wasn’t just any Shabbat dinner. At home my Shabbat dinners usually consist of getting dressed up nicely, sitting down at the table as a family (while my mother makes sure we’re wearing nice kippot), singing Shalom Aleicham, Eishat Chayil, and following up with Kiddush, washing, and a Motzie. We would then proceed to eat the meal in courses: fish, soup, salad, the main event (usually chicken and kugel), and then dessert. My mom might throw in a d’var Torah. But for the most part it’s a traditional Shabbat dinner.

This dinner on Friday the 12th was as opposite as I could get while still being Jewish. We were invited to the home of Dr. Rick Hodes, a Jewish American internal medicine doctor who lives in Addis, and was hired by the Joint Distribution Committee to take care of the Falasha Jews. In addition, he volunteers some of his time at an orphanage/medical clinic.

We walk in to the house and see about 10 Ethiopian children and maybe 4 or 5 other white guests (of which only 2 were Jewish). We introduce ourselves (although I met most of the kids a few days before hand) and start schmoozing with the crowd. Within the next 15 minutes more kids (which now total about 16 of which about 14 live with him), the doctor himself, and a few other guests pour into the house. It is now time to start. Like my mother, he gives all the males a head covering. But these are not just any skullcaps. He takes out this massive sack as if he’s Santa about to give each child worldwide a toy, and starts tossing out hats to everyone: big and bulky hats in the shape of menorahs. He then asks everyone to make a circle and hold hands with the person next to them. So there we are encircled hand in hand with complete strangers with menorahs on our heads.

If this wasn’t odd enough, we then went around the circle, formally introduced ourselves and answered the following very random question that one of the kids chose: What island would you most like to go to? (I said one of the Greek isles, and my dad, Madagascar). So that was fine, we each learned names and a little about the desires of others. Then we proceeded to sing “If I Had A Hammer”. I felt like I was either in a civil rights gathering or the Barney TV show. This differed from the show for one reason: I was actually enjoying myself. I don’t really know why we sang that song, but I guess it is kind of a generic motivational song that lifts up people’s spirits (and believe me there was plenty of uplifting that needed to be done with all of the diseased children).

Shalom Aleichem came next; all of his kids knew the words (none of them are Jewish). Kiddush and Motzie proceeded. That started off normally until he threw about 20 pieces of challah across the living room, crumbs falling everywhere, to each member present. This all took place in his living room because he lacked an appropriate sized table. I began to think of what my mother’s reaction would be if she saw bread crumbs all over our couch and our rug.

I smiled.

But then I did a double-take inside my head and said to myself, “This is not my home. It’s far from it.” There were kids present recovering from spinal surgery while some were anticipating surgery of there own. Some children had tuberculosis. One boy only had only one leg due to cancer. On top of that, none had mothers (Rick lives alone), let alone their birth parents. What do a few crumbs here and there matter when you have children as sick as these?

When sitting in a room surrounded by these kids, your small problems tend to just float away like tiny dust particles. As the night continued I soon forgot all about the crumbs. Soup followed. The kids brought all the guests tasty lentil soup in mugs. We all just sat around on the couches mingling and drinking our soup. This was probably the most informal dinner I have ever eaten. While waiting for the main course, more guests joined us, one of whom Dad befriended and has already set up a meeting with. The house now had representatives from Australia, Israel, the United States, and Ethiopia. We were a melting pot of cultured people from all ages.

I had finished my soup in about 10 minutes time and shortly after, the Ethiopian main course was ready to be devoured by plenty of hungry Jews and non-Jews alike. It was buffet style with injera and about 8 different vegetable salads and sauces (Rick is a kosher vegetarian so there is no way any meat enters his kitchen). After we had eaten, about 6 of the kids and I all gathered around a coffee table and played ‘Thirteen” (a card game that I had taught them earlier in the week which they are now all addicted to). A few other children were playing a 3-D version of tic-tac-toe. “It’s not fair. Whoever goes first always wins,” I overheard one of them say.

Meanwhile Dad was talking business with some of Rick’s other guests, who are also working for Ethiopian NGO’s. The Australians were telling stories of the adventures they’ve been on as they have traveled around the world to places like Madagascar. All the while the kid who only has one leg is jumping around - over tables and between couches to try and visit with everyone. It reminded me of a scene from the movie Daddy Day Care (a film about a couple of guys babysitting 12 rowdy kids), although if I were to make a movie about the dinner this specific scene would be accompanied by Stevie Wonder’s hit “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”. The joy and speed of the song would synchronize perfectly with the scene and its settings. (If you haven’t heard the song, you should make it a priority to do so).

The night ended in a similar fashion, and as my dad and I left we couldn’t stop smiling. The doctor does this every Friday night, with an open invitation to anyone who is seeking a surreal Shabbat experience, or simply just a meal. This was a Shabbat dinner I will always remember, and it was truly the cherry on top of an unforgettable trip.

I am so pleased and relieved that my two day training session on Thursday and Friday went well. I had been studying, organizing and planning for this session for three months and spent an inordinate amount of time preparing. Over 40 NGO’s from throughout the country registered for the session and they are working on a wide variety of issues around health care, AIDS/HIV especially for kids, reproductive rights and family planning, disaster and famine relief, rural community development, and women’s groups that are fighting the female circumcision issue.

I don’t know why I was so worried about this session because I have conducted literally hundreds of training workshops on this topic, but I was concerned about the cultural and language issues distracting from a rhythm I need to feel comfortable in the training sessions. It did take me about 4 hours until I started to relax and then the rest of the training was super. Ethiopian people and NGO’s are very formal that have their coffee and tea breaks at a certain times as well as the lunches. Having these breaks is a ritual and the coffee they make is almost a sacred ceremony.

During the past 10 days I have been consulting and working with local NGO’s that would be similar to grassroots organizations in the US. Even though the gravity of the issues they are dealing with is multiplied on steroids 100 times in Ethiopia, the organizational and capacity building concerns are essentially the same. The Execute Directors are almost totally focused on their programs and projects so their infrastructures are weak and they don’t have many resources to strengthen their capacity. The government does not support NGO’s at all and these organizations get almost all of their funding thru sub-contracts with large international NGO’s that receivegrants from international funders for specific projects. This makes the NGO’s very dependent upon the internationalNGO’s for their resources. One of the key roles my host organization asked of me was to provide training and consulting to help the local NGO’s diversity and broaden out their funding base. This is the same issue with nonprofit organizations throughout the United States.

I found the people who attended the training session wonderfully warm and attentive and was thrilled that they participated so well and there was little language difficulties as long as I went slow and did not get into my New York accent. The NGO sector in Ethiopia and throughout the world is one of the fastest growing parts of a society. These civil society organizations represent, especially in third world countries the ONLY safety net for multitudes of impoverished people but they are the primary vehicles for societies to practice freedom and democracy. The reason why many countries, including Ethiopia is not more supportive of NGO’s is that they are independent of the government and represent a threat to the existing power structures. These organizations, especially the indigenous groups I work with are critical to the lives of millions of the most destitute people and represent the hope for the future. I was very grateful to be able to spend so much time working with and learning from these organizations and hope in a small way I was helpful in motivating and inspiring them to continue their critical work.

My host organization is an umbrella organization that is a membership organization of about 250 of theNGO’s and is similar to our state nonprofit associations in the US. The evaluations of the training came in very positive and they would like me to come back again to continue my training and support. The big challenge for me will be trying to limit the follow-up contact with these organizations because of their need for continuous support and their desire to have further contact with me is so great. I totally enjoyed working with these organizations

This afternoon Daniel, Yohannes and I went to the Macado that is a largest marketplace in Addis and in Africa.. We have been warned by all the tourist books and people to don’t go there alone, leave your valuables at home and keep your hands in your pocket. That was very good advice even though nothing bad happened to us. This is a marketplace unlike any shopping I have ever done. The only thing that is even remotely like this place would be the Shuck or the markets in the old city of Jerusalem. This place just goes on and on and never stops, and is teeming with people and in three hours we did not see one person who was a gringo .Therefore everywhere we walked people starred at us and kids came up wanting money. Between dancing around big rocks and people in the narrow streets, we had to watch out for cows, goats and even rams walking in the middle of the Macado. Because we were a gringo we were targeted as prime bait to be charged three or four times the normal price so everything was a negotiation. It was an interesting experience and is quite a contrast with shopping at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center.

This is Daniels last night in Ethiopia. He will be flying back to the states leaving at midnight and arriving in Boston on Monday to start his second semester at Brandeis. I loved having him with me and it really did not feel like a father/son trip but two friends experiencing a unique part of the world and trying to understand it through our privileged eyes. Every night we would spend time talking about our experiences and what is means to us and how can we possibly integrate our time here with our knowledge of the world and our background as American’s. Daniel is a very special young man and I am so proud of him. I was bursting with pride when we spent Sabbath dinner last night with Dr. Rick Hodes who is this amazing man who has dedicated 16 years in Ethiopia taking care of the Jewish Ethiopia population and on the Sabbath he takes care of the Mother Teresa Orphanes. In fact, he has adopted many of these kids and he had about 20 of them at his home last night for dinner. Every one of these kids has a severe physical disability and this man bring laughter and hope to their lives and they all call him Dad. During this week Daniel spent time with these kids and when we went to Rick’s house the kids came up to Daniel and gave him “high fives” and truly were happy to see him. Daniel taught them a new card game they are addicted to and it was tremendous seeing how easily Daniel fit into this group and how much the kids enjoyed spending time with him. It made me proud to be his father. I will miss him a lot when he leaves.

On Wednesday of this week I am traveling to Southern Ethiopia to the coffee growing region of the country. This is also the malaria section and has recently had turmoil with the burning of churches in Jimma last week where I will be flying into. I am spending time with a Catholic order of priests that has developed a series of schools, health clinics, HIV/AID programs for kids, and other service projects in this southern and western province of the country. This is also the area which is the birthplace for coffee so almost the entire economy is built on raising coffee beans. It is very hot and humid but considering the cold wave Denver is having I should not complain.

Wow what a country of contrasts!!! For most of the time is all we see are dreary browns and battered landscape surrounded by sad looking faces of people designed to spend their life in poverty. Then the past couple of days we say a totally different side of life (for a few hours).

It started with Noel Cunningham, our wonderful friend who owns Strings Restaurant helped us set up an appointment with the President of Ethiopia, President Girma. So Yohannes and I put on a suit and tie and went to the presidential palace. We stopped at the gate and the guards checked to see if our name was on the register and then let us inside and proceeded to conduct this 20 minute security search of our ‘85 land cruiser including sweeping the bottom of the car with mirrors. We drove in and parked the car surrounded by beautiful manicured lawns and flower gardens. We walked into the palace and right when we entered there was a huge red rug with four Stars of David embroidered into the carpet. We walked to the President’s office and engraved into his big desk were two Stars of David. It is interesting to see the biblical connection this country has to Jewish people. We spent almost 90 minutes with this delightful man, who walks with a cane and appears to be about 80 years old but very smart and sharp. He served us coffee and tea with western style cookies and was extremely courteous and engaging. Once he found out that I worked with NGO’s he asked me to assist one of his favorite NGO’s that he founded a number of years ago. It is called LEM Ethiopia and it is an environmental organization designed to protect the forests and replant tree’s throughout the country that have been devastated because of the need for poor people for wood to cook their food and to sell for income. Yohannes invited the President ( and he accepted) to be the featured person at his book week event in Addis Ababa on April 1st.

Then that evening we went to the Sheraton Hotel that is a five star hotel costing almost $500 million and was built by one of the Omen Sheiks and one of the wealthiest people in this planet. This hotel was fabulous and is the party and “power place” for the ambassadors, diplomats, political officials and wealthy business people in the country. We walked behind the hotel and every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday at 7PM they have this incredible light show on their fountains timed to classical music. It was delightful seeing the flow of water shooting up in the air timed to the music with the different color lighting. We also met with Dr. Rick Hodes, the Jewish doctor that also takes care of the kids at Mother Teresa’s orphanage. Daniel had just spent part of the day with Rick and he was at the hotel attending part of a conference. The television show 60 minutes is meeting with Rick to do one of their 20 minute segments on this humanitarian. We are having Sabbath dinner with him and his 14 Ethiopian kids tomorrow evening.

This evening we went to a briefing at the American Embassy that was hosted by the U.S. Ambassador and his staff. There were probably 300 people and it was the first time we saw more than a dozen white people in the same place since arriving 10 days ago. The briefing was very professionally done and they gave the American citizens an update on the health and safety issues in the country. The Ambassador danced very lightly around the topic of Somalia and I was hoping for more detailed information. Apparently the Embassy is only warning people to be vigilant and not to travel to the Ethiopia/Somalia border. They have not identified any real terrorist threats within Addis and still feel that it is a safe place for American citizens. It was hard for me to get a real reading on the conflict and the Ambassador clearly did not want to talk about this issue in public. I must say that it was comforting being inside the American compound and the quarters had pretty lawns and flowers.

The past couple of days I have been consulting with NGO’s through my host organization and I finished the first day of my training session today. I have another 8 hours to go tomorrow. The room is packed with 40 participants from around the country in a pretty small space. . The groups I have been consulting with are mostly community development groups that are working in the northern and eastern rural highland parts of the country. These are areas of Ethiopia that are very high in elevation and dry with periodic drought that could starvetens of thousands of people. These locations are extremely poor areas and people have to live off the land that is essentially deserts and carry water 5-6 miles every day. A number of the groups are working on the AIDS/HIV issue that is a serious issue in this country (as it is in all of Africa) and the female circumcision issue. There is starting to be a stronger voice among Muslim women to fight this circumcision but breaking this culture and habit is very difficult. Most of these groups are indigenous NGO’s with small budgets ($50,000USD) but they have over 40 staff because of the extremely low salary structure and the costs of doing business. The International NGO’s, on the other hand are extremely well healed, with large budgets and there staff’s are paid wages usually in pounds or dollars. They are among the highest paid people in Ethiopia and everyone wants to work for the international NGO’s. It is the local and grassroots groups that I am concentrating on and they seem to have many of the same capacity building and infrastructure issues as smaller and rural groups have in the US.

Speaking of infrastructure it is extremely minimal and lacking in Ethiopia. This is a country that is not geared for tourists and the government has chosen not to put much money into being friendly to tourists and its citizens. There is only one internet provider and one cell phone provider. Both Daniel and I have cell phones and probably 50% of the time the service and networks for down. There is only one television station in the country that is controlled by the government as are the rest of the media. Daniel and Yohannes spent four hours today trying to send an attachment to our office in Denver with the pictures we took of the President and us. Outside of the few main roads of Addis Ababa ( a city of 5 million people) every road is dirt with big rocks embedded in the dirt and you have to hold on to the door handles otherwise you will get bounced all around .Only the large streets have names but 90% of the streets have no identification to tell what street you are on. You are constantly dodging not only kids and people but goats and cattle in all parts of the city.

Daniel and I just returned from five days in the rural parts Ethiopia heading south of Addis Ababa to the towns of Awasa (that is the regional capital for the province) to Arba Minch and the Nechisar National Park. This is an area that is only about 60K from the Kenya border.

We first drove down to Awasa (about a five hour drive) where Yohannes used to live and where Ethiopia Reads has a regular library and a mobile library that is pulled by a donkey that goes out into the neighborhoods and kids read books. It was really great seeing all of the young children reading books and some of the kids read the books out loud to us. After lunch we headed another 6 hours south to Arba Minch that is a large city in Southwest Ethiopia. It is a town with grubby streets, very chaotic but with lots of charm and we did not arrive until night and made a reservation at the Swayne’s Hotel.

This hotel is used for people that are going on a safari into the Nechisar National Park and it was the first place in five days that we saw western white people. We got up early the next morning and our driver took us into the national park and we drove through a lot of jungle, rain forests and finally arrived in the Savannah or grasslands where we started to see large numbers of beautiful Zebra’s. There were herds and herds of these elegant animals and you are able to get surprising close to them without spooking them. The grasslands are immense in size and we also saw warthogs, wildebeests, kudu (a form of antelope that has big horns that point straight up in the air). Of course we also saw a lot of monkeys in the jungle riding back to the hotel.

We stayed at the Swayne’s Hotel which looks out at the national park and a lake and is very green and beautiful. With all of the poverty and incredible social issues in Ethiopia it was nice to concentrate on its beauty. We got up early the next morning and went out on our little patio in the back of the room facing the mountains and there were a dozen big Baboons just playing right next to where we were sitting. They were just running around and looking for food for their morning meal. It was great.

We then left in the morning and drove North to Awasa. I am fascinated to understand the culture from riding almost 12 hours each way from Addis to Arba Minch. About 85% of the people in Ethiopia live in rural areas and isolated villages throughout the country. Women are always walking on the sides of the road carrying either big piles of wood, bamboo, or water jugs on their backs. Donkeys are the primary means of both carrying wood and grain – Teff (used to make injera bread). Whenever we were near a village, hundreds and hundreds of people are just either walking into town or walking to their huts. Isuzu’s are barreling down the streets and our driver, Solomon was just weaving in and out honking his horn, trying to avoid the donkeys, cows and goats that are everywhere.

Every place we stopped for gas, or to buy some fruit, within 30 seconds kids surrounded our beat up Toyota Land Cruiser Sometimes there were 20-30 kids at a time. We gave one of them a empty plastic water bottle and all the kids started to fight over it. Every so often there is a barricade on the road for contraband coming into Ethiopia from Kenya or Sudan or Somalia.

The days are very hot, sunny, and very dusty in most places. Everywhere we drove there were children and the one’s who are attending school always have uniforms, the others just don’t go to school. Women are walking everywhere on the roads carrying heavy loads and the men are more scarce and almost never carrying anything. Sometimes they are driving these donkey carts that are loaded down with banana leaves or wood.

Driving through the villages people are living in either wood framed houses with tin roofs or most of the time in these huts that were either made of mud and straw or if they lived in an area with rain, made of reeds, bamboo, and banana leaf. If the area had some water, we saw a lot of banana’s, mango, some vegetables (tomatoes, onion, watermelon). In the dry areas it was all brown, and parched with very limited water. People were constantly carrying water containers that were big red or yellow plastic jugs. Most of their diet is goat and beef and in the dry areas the animals were very thin. Everyplace where there was water, people were taking baths in the shallow river/stream and filling up the water jugs from the same watering hole.

We spent one night at the Hotel Pima in downtown Awasa that is according to the guide books, the “best hotel in town”. We had to walk up 5 flights of stairs into this tiny room where not much really worked. Music was blasting all night, but at least we had a shower even though it was cold. The next night we drove about an hour north and stayed at the Aregash Lodge in Yirgalene. This is a town where Yohannes went to high school and it is about 4 hours south of Addis.. This lodge had 10 bamboo thatched tukuls (huts) that were really nice. They had western and Ethiopian food and it was a bit of an oasis in the middle of this country. At sunset they had a wonderful coffee ceremony where they roast their own coffee (they also grow the coffee), crush it, and boil it and serve it to the guests in tiny tea cups with fresh popcorn. It was incredible and it leaves Starbucks way behind. Then at around 6PM the Hyenas started to come out of their daytime homes and walked up the hills right near where we were having the coffee. At night there is an old man that walks around with a 10 foot spear apparently as the protection against the Hyenas. This lodge was pretty self contained and you could pick mangos, bananas, papaya, pineapple, guava, in addition to a pretty fancy vegetable garden that makes mine look pretty sad.

Awasa is located right near a lake that is teeming with birds, monkeys and other wildlife so we decided to rent a boat and we drove to the other side of the lake with our driver and all of a sudden we saw this extended family of Hippos. They were just lying around sunning themselves. It was pretty amazing to see their enormous size and watching them in the water. They have been there for hundreds if not thousands of years because there is no way these mammals could either enter or leave this area because of their size.

As we were heading into Addis for my solid week of consulting and training with NGO’s I started to think about the massive amounts of poverty and vulnerability of the population. I was reading a report from the USAID( United States Aid for International Development) that was saying that 75% of the population in Ethiopia makes less than $100 USD. per year . It was saying that Ethiopia, according to the human development index, is the poorest country on the planet. I feel totally overwhelmed and emotionally drained to think about how you create social change in this mass of humanity that has to spend almost every waking minute surviving. Every aspect of their lives impact each other so it is hard to look at educating kids without looking at their diet, health care, housing, etc. I am going to spend this whole week consulting and training with NGO’s working on these issues. Maybe they will have a partial answer. Maybe the answer is you pick one thing and you focus on that. Maybe you land at a spot and that is where you begin to make inroads one step at a time.

I talked with Dr. Rick Hodes tonight and he is responsible for taking care of the Jewish Falashas of which there are over 10,000 of them in Addis and a historic town called Gondor. On Sabbath he takes care of the Mother Teresa Orphanage kids and I am having Daniel spend the day with him. He also has adopted 8 Ethiopia boys and has another 6 living with him and Daniel will be helping them with their homework tomorrow.

Speaking about tomorrow, Yohannes and I have an appointment to meet with President Girmo who is the President of Ethiopia. Through Noel Cunningham’s contacts we managed to get this appointment and will be talking with him about presenting the book week (first week in April) awards.

The intensity of this country is the one word that keeps on coming up time and time again. Everything about this country (outside of the Oasis at the Lodge and the national park) is intense. Addis Ababa is the MOST INTENSE place I have ever been because there is no break (outside of the Sheridan and Hilton Hotels) from the crawling to survive; to the bleakness of the landscape; to the chaos of the streets. . There are no parks or green space and even the museums and the government offices and embassies look beaten and worn.

The Nobel peace prize this year went to a gentleman from Asia who has done some incredible work with micro-financing for women and it was the first time the award was given that tied poverty into peace. In most countries where there is extreme poverty it breeds the seeds of violence. However, Ethiopia is surely one of the poorest countries on the planet with over 40% of the people are Muslim and it is a country where people generally get along well and there does not seem to be major divisions between the tribes or the Muslims and Christians( even though I could certainly be wrong on this point). Why is this because in their neighboring country of South Africa there is tremendous violence in Johannesburg or in Nairobi, Kenya? A few people I have talked with feel that even though there are wealthy people in Addis, there are NO real wealthy or poor parts of these cities. Everyone seems to live next to each other and is dependent upon each other for their neighborhood or community.

I have to get up early tomorrow morning and have a busy day.

I am writing before I leave Addis Ababa for 5 days into Southern Ethiopia and wanted to share some of my initial adventures and observations. .

INITIAL THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES IN ETHIOPIA

After traveling for over 24 hours we arrived in Addis Ababa at 9AM on Tuesday January 2nd. The last couple of hours on the plane were truly beautiful as we watched the sun rise over three African countries and looked down at the dry and parched desert to reach Addis. We could see the sun from a thin sliver to painting the whole horizon a beautiful red. It was like we could also see the shape of the horizon as we were heading south.

We arrived at the airport and we walked around the slightly tarnished but made to look like a modern airport. After clearing customs they ex-rayed our luggage and we jumped into Yohannes Land Cruiser and drove into Addis. The first site we saw “hit me through the eyes” and both of us said “wow this is not like anything I have ever seen”. We slowed down and banging on the window of the car (with a cane) was a young man in tattered clothes, bending down, disabled and broken back, walking on all fours with a cane, banging on our car window, begging for money. Welcome to Ethiopia.

Almost every time we slowed down, because you don’t stop for lights, because there are none, people would come up to the car and if you made any eye contact with them they would start talking to you and asking for money. Traffic is crazy driving around this town of 5,000,000 people. There are few street signs, most streets don’t have names and if they do, the names are constantly changing. Few people have car insurance and if you are stopped by the police you usually can give the cop 50 burr( about $5.00) and you are on your way. Therefore, being a cop in Addis is an extremely lucrative profession. It is the most dangerous city I have ever driven in because nobody pays attention to anyone and people just wander all over the streets and cars are just driving without paying much attention to protocol because there is little. The only streets that are paved are the main streets and everything else is a dirt road filled with pot holes 2 feet deep with beds of rocks and teeming with people, goats and cattle walking on them.

For two days I did not see any white person except when I went to the Hilton Hotel to make a plane reservation to fly to Jimma, which is in the Kaffe Province in Southwest Ethiopia and is the coffee growing area of the country. It was also the birthplace of coffee. However being a westerner did not make me feel uncomfortable at all, even though everybody stares at you.

We went to the US Embassy to register to let them know that we were in the country because the US State Department issued a travel warning for parts of the country bordering Somalia. The Embassy was closed for the day because they were observing the passage of President Ford. The Embassy is an ugly building totally surrounded by two “levels” of barricades. When went back to register today there were hundreds of Ethiopians standing outside trying to get exit visa’s out of the country. We had to go thru three screenings and then went upstairs to register. The only happy people were the couples with Ethiopian babies in their arms and on their laps, waiting exit visa’s to take their new babies to America. Daniel and I said that these were the luckiest kids in the country. I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful these babies are.

After this we went to a restaurant to get something to drink and to try to understand our feelings. Going into the restaurant we were searched and screened. After this we went to a money changer (black market) that was in the back of a little store that sold tee shirts and wooden carvings of African animals. The exchange rates they were giving were much better than banks. You cash $200 USD into $3,000 Burr and you have a wad of money that stretches incredibly in this country. I took out Yohannes and an employee to a pizza restaurant tonight (Daniel was thrilled because it was the first meal in two days he ate) and the total bill came to 70 Burr that is a little over $8 USD.

Then we visited Ethiopia Reads library which is the first and only public children’s library in the country. This is where Yohannes is the executive director. This NGO is the one I have been working with for the past year and is developing 6 children’s libraries during the next few months, and is publishing kids’ books in Amharic. This organization is the only one in Ethiopia that is providing books and reading assistance to children. Their offices are down a dirt road with huge pot holes (these act as natural speed bumps) and you have to open a gate to get into their compound and it provides for kids a little island of giving, enrichment, and sanity in a sea of poverty, survival and chaos. I loved the library in Addis. Almost every seat was filled with kids (over 100 kids) sitting and looking at pictures and trying to read books. Even though many of the younger kids did not understand English at all, they were engrossed in the pictures. Daniel picked up two books that Jane Kurtz had written and started to read to about 20 kids. It was very special seeing Daniel reading to these kids and making a human connection on a universal level. I started to cry when I realized how little chance most of these kids have to a life that even remotely compares to some of the poverty situations I was in during the civil rights movement in the United States in the 60’s.

We met with an interested man yesterday afternoon who was an educaor and leader at St. Mary’s College/University. . This is a private school (in Ethiopia this means that it is a for-profit entity) that is 7 years old and already has over 10,000 students. During the past 10 years almost 40 of these private colleges have sprouted up in the country to fill a crying demand to try to get an education and break out of this “culture and history of poverty and powerlessness”. Hewas a very impressive and extremely bright man who started to talk about the educational system and the society in general in Ethiopia. He believes that the government does not put alot of money into kids and does not have a high priority for their education. They seem to forget them after the age of 4 or 5 years old he was saying. Almost all available money (after the military and war efforts) is going to fight hunger and AIDS so there is not much left for kids. I asked him some questions about philanthropy and charity and he says there is almost nothing. Charity BEGINS AND STAYS AT HOME and what little money people make stays with the family or the Diaspora sends them back to their families. He gave us a tour around the campus and it was exciting to see every seat in the business library occupied with students doing their homework; students taking a test and others outside talking. It was a very normal scene like you would find at a “serious university” in the states.

Driving around this town, you quickly realize there is almost no middle class. Either you have Burr or you don’t and most people don’t. Everywhere you drive, every turn you make (outside of the Sheridan and Hilton hotels) there are people scratching and clawing to survive. You look at people and they are seeking something that seems nearly impossible. Yet you look into the beautiful kids eye’s at Ethiopia Reads, and you watch them at St. Mary’s College and you see beauty, hope and opportunity that is crushed by the reality of the society they are living in.

Tomorrow we are having a car and driver pick us up at 6AM to drive 10 hours to Awasa and then to Arba Minch which is where the Nechisar National Park is located. Ethiopia Reads has a donkey library in Awasa and we are going to visit that place and then drive down to the national park to see the African wildlife and to experience a part of the country, its beauty and serenity. We will be there thru Monday. Sunday is the Ethiopian Christmas so it is a big holiday and we can’t get a driver to drive on this Sunday and you can’t rent a car without renting a driver.

I talked with Dr. Rick Hodes today who is this incredible humanitarian physician who came to Ethiopia on a Fulbright 16 years ago and never left. His takes care of the Ethiopia Jewish Community and then on Sabbath, volunteers his time taking care of the kids at Mother Teresa’s orphanage. We brought him a number of items from the states that he wants and we are celebrating Sabbath with him next week and Daniel will be spending time at the orphanage while I am consulting and training with NGO’s from throughout the country.

I am going to sign off now because I have not had more than 3 hours of sleep since leaving Denver and I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Both Daniel and I are well and we are just an emotional basket case trying to figure this all out within our context of being a protected, comfortable, and lucky people from America.