Arat Kilo benefiting youth

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(Ruta writing) I am continuing to describe the activities of Arat Kilo Child Care and Community Development Organization to share the excellent work enabled by the charitable contributions of others. To help poor women develop alternatives to the desperate resort of commercial sex work, this organization sponsors an Early Child Development program for children under 3. By taking care of the children during the day, the young mothers have time to attend training, seek work, and do regular jobs. As you can see from the pictures, these little kids are really cute. Even when my kids were in day care and preschool, I don’t think that I ever saw 40-50 kids under age 3 sit nicely and calmly on the floor to greet visitors or wait for instructions.

This organization also has a small “library” for the youth. The library is different from what you'd expect; for example, one cannot check out the books. The library contains textbooks that are used in local public schools, because often the schools do not have enough textbooks for each kid. The youth come to the library to be able to study what was covered in class or do their homework. Textbooks are certainly a problem here.

There is also a garden to teach people how to grow vegetables, salad, etc. If people in Addis Ababa live in the tin roof shanties, they may have never had grass or any land to grow things. Thus creates the need to teach basic skills, such as urban gardening.

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