HIgher Grounds on the News!

Education in the Cradle of Civilization

January 2010
Chris Treter

There could not be a starker contrast between the comfortable lives we lead in beautiful Traverse City, and the struggles that play out daily in the village of Afursa Waro in Yrgacheffe, Ethiopia. The lives of our coffee growing friends is a world away from ours.

The journey to Afursa Waro from Traverse City starts with a 36-hour trip to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. This region is rich with human ancestry; it is where the earliest hominids roamed some 4.4 million years ago, which is why we know this place today as "the cradle of civilization." And yet, as soon as you exit the airport, you can already see civilization's greatest divide. Everywhere, there are homeless people—the poorest of the poor who inhabit Ethiopia's underdeveloped and globally forgotten countryside. In a display of heartbreaking irony, you see the downtrodden baking in the sun on a small patch of grass perched on a hill between Ethiopia's presidential palace and the luxurious Sheraton Addis hotel: an oasis of wealth and opulence, just steps from some of the world's most extreme poverty.

From Addis Ababa, a seven-hour drive brings you to Afursa Waro, a small village of a few hundred families, many of whom are coffee farmers. Their reality? Toiling to produce a crop that allows them to barely scrape by, while bringing wealth to others who live thousands of miles away.

During January, the residents of Afursa Waro are busy preparing the coffee harvest. Each day they leave their homes—round, dirt-floored bamboo huts—to walk between the coffee trees and pick the ripe coffee cherries one by one. The workers then bring the harvest to a cooperative center where neighbors work together to depulp, ferment, dry and sort the beans, which are sought the world over. As members of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, a union of farming cooperatives with more than 128,000 members, the growers receive a fair-trade price for their specialty coffees. Yet, due to a lack of land, social support and resources, they live a life of dire poverty. Viewed as peasants, they are considered second-class citizens, relegated to the countryside forgotten and forced to fend for themselves without any of the social services we take for granted.

With 39 percent of the population living below the international poverty line—$1.25 a day—and the average life expectancy at 54 years, the future is especially bleak for the children of Afursa Waro. The educational plight plays out across much of Ethiopia's coffee growing region, where sixty-five percent of the population over age 15 is illiterate. Schools can only be reached by foot, with some treks taking four hours. Even the schools themselves are struggling: many do not have desks, chalkboards, writing supplies or even books.

But the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union and its members have taken matters into their own hands in an effort to turn around the current state of affairs. The farmers of Afursa Waro have used their fair trade premiums and support from a number of coffee companies to build a health clinic and grade schools all the way to high school. But they're still short on many important amenities, including a library, bathrooms, medicine, a lab, living quarters for the teachers, and, most importantly, books— the 8th grade civics has only 2 books to share among its 100 students.

Daka ("The Valley") Kindergarten, a school funded through support from Higher Grounds and Traverse City residents, was one of the first schools erected by the coffee cooperative. Nestled in a valley and surrounded by cows that use the school's grounds as a pasture, the school is within walking distance for the children of Afursa Waro. In the first six months since the school opened, 100 children ages 5 through 9 enrolled at Daka, coming here five days a week.

The Ethiopian government had promised to supply the school with chairs, desks, chalk boards and books, but these tools have yet to arrive. In the meantime, the teachers make due with what little resources they have—students sit on benches in an otherwise empty, cement-floored room, but they listen to their teachers with enthusiasm.

Daniel, age 9, and his sister Zalelem, age 8, attend Daka Kindergarten. They're from a family of nine that lives in a one-room hut with no electricity built by parents Birke Kante and Gezahegen Shuna. The children range in age from 12 months to 15 years; one outbuilding serves as the family's kitchen and another serves as the toilet. The fact that Daniel, Zalelem and their siblings now have educational opportunities is a source of much pride for the family—a sentiment that echos throughout the Afursa Waro community. "Education is the only hope for girls," says Birke, the mother of this family. "Otherwise they are forced to make babies and care for their family from the very early age of 15. Going to school gives us hope that Zalelem will have options in life."

It is for these reasons that Higher Grounds remains committed to helping grow the educational opportunities available to the people of Ethiopia's coffee-growing regions. To help us bring the basic need of education to the children of Ethiopia – contact us at coffee@highergroundstradin

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On the Ground - In Pursuit of Education for All.

More than 600 years ago in northeastern Ethiopia, Muslim merchants trekked through the mountains to export the world’s first cultivated coffee beans -- thus beginning what has since become a multi-billion dollar industry. But in modern-day Ethiopia, despite the country’s coffee exports accounting for nearly 60 percent of the national GDP, many coffee farmers and their families live on the edge of survival. Education, health care, and access to water are all in very limited supply. In the Yrgacheffe region, where some of the world’s most unique and sought-after coffees originate, little more than half the region’s children complete primary school. The adult literacy rate is 36 percent. Life expectancy is 53 years.

But at the Ethiopian fair trade coffee cooperative of Negele Gorbitu, in the town of Afursa Waro, coffee farmers are taking their future into their own hands. They’ve used the premiums from the sale of their fair trade and organic coffee beans to build a health clinic and primary school. These were big steps, but they’re still not enough: the closest secondary school is a five-mile walk away, and the primary school is already overfilled with students with far too few school supplies.

The farmers of Negele Gorbitu have asked us for help, prompting us to begin an intensive fundraising campaign to raise $100,000 to build three schools in Ethiopia. Join us in our campaign to bring the gift of education to the children of coffee growing families in Ethiopia. Thus is born On the Ground, a new effort to bring the gift of education to our coffee growing friends. Learn more at our new non-profit - http://www.onthegroundglobal.org