New Ethiopian inspired all occasion Kindu cards!
Our beautifully designed cards feature paintings by the renowned Ethiopian Artist and Kindu Trust supporter Ephrem Assefa. All cards are blank inside for your personal greeting. These top quality cards are available to order now.
The Royal Parks Half Marathon
The Royal Parks Half Marathon – 6th October 2013
The Kindu Trust is delighted to be putting out a team for the Royal Parks Half Marathon in London 2013. Runners will raise funds to deliver education and employment opportunities for the children that we work with and their families. We are still looking for volunteers to join Team Kindu, if you want to get involved please contact Kindu@kindutrust.org or click on the link above for more information.
Join Team Kindu at the Royal Parks Half Marathon on 6th October 2013
The UK team is delighted to offer supporters the chance to join us at this year’s Royal Parks Half Marathon, taking place on Sunday 6th October 2013. Voted the best Outdoor Event in 2011, the 13.1 mile route will take runners across some of London’s most stunning parks: Hyde Park, The Green Park, and St James’s Park.
We have four places left in a team of six; we are calling all runners and joggers to join Team Kindu. This annual fundraiser brings in much needed funds for the charity, with each runner set a fundraising target of £500. Funds raised will be used to deliver education and employment opportunities for the children and their families we work with in Ethiopia.
To register your place contact the UK team at Kindu@kindutrust.org
Take a look at last year’s run:
Update – The Biogas Community Toilet and Shower Project is now in place!
As a part of our mission to help the communities where our sponsored children live Kindu has installed Gondar town’s first biogas community service: a public toilet with eight rooms, four showers, four toilets, hand-washing facilities, and a kitchen—all powered using waste processed through the bio-gas digester creating fuel. We worked with residents, a biogas engineer and local government offices and the project is scheduled to be self-financing by the end of the year.
Biogas is a modern source of energy that converts organic waste and manure into a gas that is suitable for cooking. At the moment most households in Ethiopia use wood or charcoal; as well as encouraging deforestation these fuels are costly and non-renewable. The use of biogas can reduce a household’s fuel expenditure by 80%.
So in January 2013 The Kindu Trust opened a public toilet and shower facility with a biogas digester in the Abiye-Egzi Kebele (district) of Gondar. Waste from the toilets and organic waste from the neighbourhood are converted into methane which heats the showers and provides a kitchen area with cooking gas.
Thanks to the project three members of the community are employed full-time, and residents are using the kitchen to cook and sell their food. The Biogas Community Toilet and Shower has proved popular as a way of providing a renewable energy source and improving sanitary conditions, and we are already looking into replicating the project into other districts!
To visit the project page, click here.
The old public toilet…
Digging the cistern for the digester…
The new public toilet!
And the completed showers!
The gas is working
And ready for use by the residents.
Tours of Ethiopia 2013
Tours of Ethiopia 2013
Link Ethiopia Guest Tours, in partnership with The Kindu Trust, now offers two different and equally exciting memorable tours, one that takes in the Historic Route in the north of the country (with an introduction to our team in Gondar) but also a second visit to a contrasted cultural area to the south of the country. To find out more, click here or Contact Us.
Weekly Update 22nd March
Like most governments, getting projects accomplished is not always a straight-forward and easy process. Their have been continued efforts to receive permission to open a bakery but with conflicting information from the government.
Four visitors visited The Kindu Trust-Ethiopia. Two were from Gondar University Hospital and promised to bring some vistors with them next week. They also purchased some products from The Kindu Gift Shop.
- 61 children received Kindu Klub hot meals
- 46 children received Play Group meals
- 66 children attended the library
- 16 children attended football
Weekly Update 15th March
Last week was a positive week for The Kindu Trust.
- 74 children attended the library
- 67 children received hot meals at the Kindu Klub
- 42 children received hot meals at Play Group
- 24 children attended football
- 8 packs were due to be sent out and 8 were
- 2 home visits were completed
1000 birr were given to four beneficiaries for much needed house construction projects. Having housing that is reliable is very important and a basic necessity.
One beneficiary was given a bed and sheets as he was having a problem with his. Now, with warmth and comfort, he can sleep peacefully at night.
We are still waiting to hear word form the Gondar town trade and transport office on the possibility of opening a bakery. The government said they would notify us of their decision next week.
Weekly Report 10th March
- 65 children received Kindu Klub hot meals
- 43 children received Play Group meals
- 72 children attended the library
- 14 packs were due to be sent out and 12 were actually sent out
- 2 home visits were completed.
- There was a school meeting the day football usually happens.
House work is currently being done on a home which started in September of 2012. There was serious leaking problems as well as the entire structure falling over.
A brief explanation about TKT was given to the Exodes tour group who came to visit.
There was contact with the Trade and Transport Office in Gondar town to discuss whether The Kindu Trust could set up a bakery project as a source of capital. The officlas said this could be done if the requirements, which will be passed along to us next week, are met.
Weekly Update of 25 February
Here is this weeks update about information from The Kindu Trust-Ethiopia.
- 74 children attended the library
- 60 children received Kindu Klub hot meals
- 44 children received Play Group meals
- 32 children played football
- 9 backs were sent out
- 5 home visits were completed
Home Improvements – One beneficiary received necessary housing repairs that cost 453 euro. The house was leaking during the raining season and it was hard to live in. This is a step in the right direction to comfortable living.
Tourist Activity – Two visorts dropped by The Kindu Trust and bought some products from the gift shop.
Hannukah in Gondar
Some of our sponsored families enjoyed their very own form of Chanukah celebration thanks to Meketa sponsorship and supporters. Hila Bram, the co-founder of Meketa, was in Gondar and was party to the Kindu team shopping expedition to buy food and household gifts for the festivities.
Hila Bram presents a chicken to one of the Meketa beneficiaries.
We decided to tailor the Chanukah gift to be a present that will be most beneficial to the Ethiopian Jewish community, providing a mixture of luxuries and basic food items to last for a little while.
The logistics of providing the Meketa and Kindu seasonal gifts required more extensive planning than it would do in Britain. It is a lot harder to plan ahead when there aren’t fridges to store food. The first stop was the bank to pick up a big bundle of old, dirty banknotes – no paying by credit card possible. Next, we headed down to the market in Arada. Each stall just sold a small number of items so we visited a lot of different stalls to gather everything that was needed.
The age-old question of ‘why does the chicken cross the road?’ became rephrased as ‘having bought 40 live chickens how do you take them home?’. Transportation occurred in a bajaj (motorised rickshaw) with forty live chickens squeezed onto the back shelf and the floor so that they didn’t dirty the seats, and a member of staff squashed alongside to empty them at the other end. On arrival at the Kindu office, all the staff helped carry the said chickens inside. They needed cornmeal and water to keep them healthy and fed until the families came in to pick them up. By the time they left, the chickens had deposited excrement on the office floor in thanks for the grain provided them. A few hours later the staff carried forty 15-kilo bags of tef (a native Ethiopian grain) into the office as well.
The following day, the forty families all came to the Kindu centre to collect their Chanukah gifts. The delight with which the gifts were received made the two days of effort well worth it. Families were pleased to receive a live chicken, tef to last them a month, onions, lentils, oil, as well as the rare delicacies of coffee and sugar, and some new pots and dishes for cooking and storing, and other items. Then the next problem was how you get all of these home – no supermarket trolleys and so you need at least two people to carry home the goodies!!The food they received would be sufficient for the family to last well beyond a single meal, and provide extras for weeks to come. Warmest thanks to our supporters for your kind donations, enabling Meketa to provide this food!
The Kindu Trust 