Bahir Dar Academy

It has been some time since we put out an update. Ethiopia has the second highest population in sub-sahara Africa yet is characterized by the lowest access to primary education. Only 51% of eligible children attend school. Only 40% of eligible girls attend school. Secondary education is only accessible to 10% of the population. Those who manage to attend school usually receive very poor education with very limited resources. Fray Shibabaw and her school Bahir Dar Academy is doing a great deal to change that. There are more girls attending than boys and the girls are consistently getting the higher marks. Recently many students from Bahir Dar Academy took national exams for Ethiopia. The average grade for all students across Ethiopia was 50%. The lowest grade for students from Bahir Dar Academy was 94% and several got 100%. The quality of education at Bahir Dar Academy is miles above the national average.

This year we have a new computer Lab with 25 new computers PTL! We also have a junior computer Lab with an additional 10 computers. I have 750 computer students which are taking a great deal of my time at the moment. I have two assistants, however, that will be able to take over more responsibilities once they get up to speed- hopefully freeing my time for the many other " irons in the fire."
Some of the other ideas we are working on is to develop several vocational training centres that will be an opportunity to address the incredible unemployment plague of this country. We are working with my sister Beth and her organization Dev-xchange to see some of these ideas become a reality. Their website is http://www.devxchange.org/. There are two ladies from Barrie that are helping to start an International Hair Salon and cosmetology school. We see this as one opportunity to give young ladies an opportunity to earn a living other than prostitution. Devxchange has been set up to give professionals the opportunity to give something back to developing countries like Ethiopia so if you have any skill to offer in just about any field get in touch and we'll put you to work. Contact mailto:info@devxchange.org?subject=Information.
We are also continuing to develop the multi-purpose centre with the KHC church. Due to the high cost of cement we are exploring some new technologies that may introduce revolutionary building techniques to the typical cookie cutter construction techniques they use here. We'll keep you posted as this develops.
Sarah and Rachel are continuing their home schooling with Sue. Sarah's favourite subject is Math while Rachel's is Art and Recess.
The University students are not yet back to classes so we haven't kicked off our Big Brother- Big Sister program this year yet. We recently took a seminar on storytelling. This was designed to communicate with non literate people. We hope to train the university students in some of these techniques as they work with the street kids.