English Open Week - Opening Day

We put on an English Open Week at the Hawassa College of Teacher Education from Saturday, June 7th to Saturday, June 14th and it was a huge success. The event almost didn't happen because of a lack of budget. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the General Education Quality Improvement Program (GEQIP) budget was not released and this is where the majority of the funds for education comes from. It would be like the ministry of education in a western country not releasing any money to schools for the year. As a result, it has been incredibly difficult to write proposals,  plan training's and events, or plan anything. However, about a week or 10 days before the event was supposed to begin, the Dean of the college, Ato Abera, found a budget source and the British Council volunteered to put in a little bit of money as well. Suddenly, it was go time and the opening day arrived quicker than expected. We had a live graffiti show, speeches, a poetry reading in honor of the late Maya Angelou, and a brilliant Tae Kwon Do demonstration to start the event off.

Photo: MC Tesfahun opening the show

Photo: "Still I Rise" Reading
of Maya Angelou Poem

Photo: Live Graffiti Show

Photo: Opening Speeches

Photo: Habtamu Speech

Photo: Dean Abera Speech

Photo: British Council Presentation

The Korean volunteer organization here in Ethiopia is called the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). They have a long history in Ethiopia. In fact, during the Korean War, Ethiopia sent soldiers to fight for South Korea and the strength of the friendship between the two countries is quite impressive. The Korean volunteers that I know here in Hawassa are here to teach art and Tae Kwon Do and the work they are doing is amazing.  Jun and Han are the Tae Kwon Do Masters and they put together a brilliant show for the English Open Week opening ceremony.

Photo: Han demonstrating his skills.

Photo: Huge vertical 

Photo: The Tae Kwon Do crew

Photo: These kids put on an English presentation for the guests. 

Photo: The VSO volunteer tent

Photo: My betam tiru guadena, Abraham even came down to check things out

Photo: Another tent was set up for students to play online English games.

When I was home for Christmas, my niece Tavia gave me a bunch of books that she had collected and wanted to send to Ethiopia. It was completely her initiative and she collected more than 30 books. As it turned out, it is more difficult to give away books than you might think if you want to be certain that the books go to the intended recipients. We ended up giving them away at the English Open Week to individual kids and that ensured that the intended recipients all received one. There is a picture of Tavia and her brother William in each of the photos of the kids that received the books. Needless to say, the students were super excited to get prizes. 

Photo: The first batch of students to get their books.

Photo: The Second batch of kids to get books.