With Fuel Their Future’s 2023 Ethiopia trip on the horizon and our re-launch of our social media and blog posts, I decided to write about our intentions for our trip. Neiva McKim, Colton McKim, Katie Weber, and I will be flying out of Washington DC early on Friday, May 26. We are compromising a 5 hour drive in the middle of the night to DC in order to accommodate a direct flight. While Neiva and Colton are experienced travelers to Ethiopia, I have only ever been to Morocco once for a five day trip, barely scratching the surface of a bright, exciting, yet dissimilar culture to eastern Africa. And Katie Weber has yet to leave North America (we’ll try to take it easy on her). Once we arrive, fresh-faced and excited, in Addis Ababa, our guide will drive us the long and bumpy, yet beautiful four hours down to Awassa where we will be staying for much of the trip.
Having discussions centered around the importance of this trip has been a key factor into the next two years of our internal strategic plan. Fuel Their Future has high aspirations that no child will go hungry at Yiddiddiya English School by the end of 2024. Currently, the school reports about 50 children who either live too far to go home for lunch or simply don’t have food in the home. Fuel Their Future is steadily serving 30 children breakfast and lunch everyday. While this may be a small number out of the 450-some children at the school, we want to make sure they are all healthy and ready to learn.
So what are we doing there and how is this supposed to help raise money here in the United States? We are planning on bringing a little bit of Ethiopia back with us. While we are there, the school is allowing us to interview and take photos of these smiling children and their families/guardians to not see them as far-away abstract ideas, but to humanize them in ways other, larger programs may not be able to. We will get to know these kids you see smiling on our instagram page and give you the opportunity to sponsor and get to know one or some of them too (without enduring a 13 hour flight, though all are welcome to join)! This information will drive our blog posts, social media pages, fundraising events, and interactions with our donors.
But that’s not all we are doing while halfway across the world. In order to understand these families and their way of life and what their needs are, we need to immerse ourselves in their culture, which means visiting their parks, cities, countryside, and experiencing a traditional Ethiopian meal before making the trip back home--and even checking out a globally recognized skate park that encourages youth to seek healthy outlets.
While much of Africa has been stigmatized as unsafe for travel--and while that’s true to any extent in any unfamiliar place--there are wonders in Africa, and Ethiopia specifically, you can’t experience anywhere else on earth. Check out some of the travel blogs below for more unique and exciting things to do and see in Ethiopia.
-Marcie Blandford
Social Media Coordinator
PR Specialist
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