HOST (IN AMHARIC):
Ethiopia’s former international supermodel Anna Getaneh is blessed
not only with a beautiful face, but with a beautiful heart and soul. The daughter of a diplomat, she lived most of her life abroad. In 1993, she visited a refugee camp at Moyale on the border
of Ethiopia and Kenya. Unable to turn her back to the silent tears and unspoken dreams of the children there, she embarked on a journey to make a real difference.
By 1997, the Ethiopian Children’s Fund (ECF) had been registered as a non-governmental organization.

(In English) Anna(f):
For the first time, I had come into direct contact with the children and also their families who were living in extreme poverty, mainly refugees, who were in short-term camps
that were set up in this remote village. And when I returned from that trip, I decided
that I really wanted to do something. So I started the Ethiopian Children’s Fund.
And we found the small town of Aleltu, and we realized that it’s you know 15,000 people,
but there were still a lot of orphans that were not cared for.
So we started with 18, we’ve been growing from 35-40 children every year. So now recently, with the new academic year, we have reached over 400 children. And we hope that we can
continue not just to grow, but to also be able to care for the children once they have finished so we can get them work opportunities and training, etc.

Anna(f):
We have a huge waiting list of maybe 600, 700 students every year, but we can only take 40.
And that’s very difficult. So we only take the children who don’t have parents or who have no support.