Scheduled to open in the summer of 2010, this school will serve 200 children in the farming village of Ekodaga, located in the countryside of the Oromo region, just north of Addis Ababa. There is no school to serve these children currently. This project will also provide adult education for parents, and will endeavor to bring light and water to the school and community.

Tsegereda serves thirty kindergarteners and thirty children in grades 1-4. These latter are graduates from our kindergarten program. As our flagship school, we hope to make a model program out of Tsegereda. We have been very fortunate to have many visitors from Europe and America who have mentored our teachers and added their distinct talents and ideas to our classroom experience.

Tsegereda is located in a northern suburb of the capital called Shiro Meda, one of the oldest and poorest districts of the city, and also one of the prettiest. In the nineteenth century, Emperor Menelik II first settled his capital on Entoto Mountain, just above the school.

The second Tesfa school was opened in October, 2006 in a small town 100 kilometers outside of Addis Ababa called Mojo. We serve 120 kindergarteners from disadvantaged families there with a staff of nine. On registration day, 500 families showed up to apply. The need is real! This school has been passed on to be administered by an Ethiopian NGO called ‘Bright Life for Children’.

Both founded in the fall of 2007, these schools are twinned in an experiment in sustainability and diversification of services. Can schools simultaneously boost the standards of early childhood education among families that can afford the low-level tuitions while also helping to fund schools for families that can afford none? It can be done: these schools are a success.

This is Tesfa’s first foray into non-formal primary education for rural populations. This school will serve 200 farmer’s children from the area around the village of Gobame, outside Bahir Dar in the north of Ethiopia, with a condensed primary education delivered on a schedule amenable to the daily and annual schedules of farming families.