Ziban Albe School Opening at Hiwane

On Sat 21 Apr 2012 Mr Gobezay Woldearegay, Head of Tigray Bureau of Education officially opened Ziban Albe Complete Elementary School at Hiwane in the Tigray Region of Northern Ethiopia.

Mr. Amare, Director of the school addresses onlookers including Messer’s Gobezay, Samson Tsegaye of Solar Energy (a local Addis Abeba based charity) and Bisrat Mesfin, the EYES General Manager (A-CET’s Ethiopian partner charity). Built to the highest standards with clean, tiled floors and ceilings the school’s design ensures that the classrooms are always cool and bright.

Above we can see how modern technology is being brought to the rural population. This is the purpose built IT room fitted with solar powered computers. The computers consume only 15 watts of electricity and have battery back-up for eight hours. It is only the second facility of its kind to be set up in Ethiopia (the first was set up by A-CET as a prototype last year).

Costing more than £250,000, this school took nine months to build using a local contractor and local labour overseen by our EYES Civil Engineer. The Bureau of Education undertake to use the building solely for education and provide all the staff and materials. Meanwhile, to give them a sense of ownership in the building the community will maintain the building and its security making sure that the school is self sufficient from day one.

All images were taken by our 3rd year Media Diploma student, Haftom Gilay (Moko). A video of the ceremony has been taken and is being edited. A short version will be posted on Youtube linked to our web-site. A longer version will distributed as a DVD with our Annual Report in Oct/Nov later this year as “Learning for Life 3”.

Please help us

NONE of this work could be achieved without the continuing vital support of our all our dedicated and fully committed donors. Our next school will be at Metego, 10 miles north of the Tigray Regional capital of Mekelle and will cost £140,000. We already have the majority of funding for this, but need a further £20,000 for furniture and solar lighting. Can you help please?

Ways to help.