LEAP

LEAP, a Scottish charity, set up in 2005, by Sandy Littlejohn and Sirgut Yadeta, is trying to help these people to realise their dream. The founders decided to set up the charity after observing the grounding poverty while on a holiday in the area in 2002. 

Only where 42 per cent of the population can read and write, the level of poverty is very high. The student/teacher ratios are 100:1 and sometimes there are single classes with as many as 200 children jammed together on a dirt floor. There is poor infrastructure, with classrooms constructed of sticks and mud with little light or ventilation, topped with metal roofing sheets that produce high heat in sunshine and deafening noise in rain, often without access either to latrines or to water.  

There is also a lack of basic furnishings, including desks and chairs, as well as textbooks and other learning materials. Girls are under-represented in the schools. Attitudinal and family-related factors (such as early marriage, stereotypic perceptions, preference for boys in parental investment costs and lack of day-care centres) affect the full involvement of girls in education.

If there are five children in a family, a decision has to be made whom to send to school, as it is financially impossible to send them all.  Normally only one or two would make it. The children who are sent to school end up in a class with over 100 kids where there is only one teacher. These rooms have no chairs, tables or any learning materials.  They attend a morning or afternoon shifts, and that is after walking 2 to 5 km.  Yet, these children are the privileged ones.  The fate of the rest is to look after the sheep and goats while their parents work in the fields. These kids really want to go to school and their families want very much to send them. Unfortunately, they can’t.

LEAP wants to give these children a chance for a better life. It wants to put a  smile on the children’s face and give a boost to their future by giving them the simple opportunity of education. Local farmers have agreed to give up their land for the project. They said that if there had to be a choice between the land for farming and a school for their children, there was no choice.  The project’s objectives are to provide lasting change in the region and ultimately relieve its extreme poverty by constructing an educational facility for five hundred youth, and to create income-generating projects by giving skill development training.

For many people, Ethiopia brings to mind a vision of famine. The best hope for changing this vision is to invest resources in the education of children during their earliest years.  LEAP believes that education is one of the cornerstones to beating poverty and creating sustainable, self-sufficient communities. As children are the next generation and the only hope for the country’s future giving them their basic right to education is the best thing that anyone can do to help the community to overcome this grounding poverty.