Thursday, November 27, 2014

Giving of The Thanks


After spending 7 months now in my small Ethiopian village there are many things in my life that have been brought to light. This might be due to all the sunshine I am experiencing or the copious amounts of time I have to think about things.  With Thanksgiving already here I really want to take this time to share with you how truly thankful I am for my education. You don’t realize in the states just how good your education is even if you grow up in not the nicest of neighborhoods.  Comparing the resources that are available to students and teachers in America to what they have in Ethiopia is not even possible. Teachers in the high school earn around 2,500 birr, or 125$ USD, each month.  Class rooms here are made up of desks and a white board. Teachers often time have to bring their own chalk to class. Class sizes range from 60-80 students and some teachers have to teach more than 6 sessions of their class. The school library consists of four bookshelves with books. This library is for all the students in both the high school and primary school. There are no children’s books and very few novels. As someone who reads at least one book a week this is heart breaking.  How can we expect students to do well in school when most of them cannot afford the textbooks they need for class? How do you encourage students to think critically when many of them don’t have food to eat at home?  

So this my friends is where I make a plea for you.  This holiday season while you are online shopping, purchasing that perfect gift for your loved ones can you take a second to think of the children of Chitu, Ethiopia? If you visit Betterworldbooks.com you can purchase a book and have it send anywhere in the world for free shipping and handling. Whats even better is that the books are extremely affordable. Take $5 and send me a book to have donated in your name to our school library. The process is simple. Pick out your favorite book, be it a childrens book or a novel, add it to your shopping card and when you go to check out enter my address as the address to have it sent to.  Can we solve all the world’s problems?  Not in one day. But we can take a small step in helping the education of students. This holiday season spread the love all the way to Ethiopia!

My address:

Andrea Spake
PO Box 306
Woliso, Ethiopia

2 comments:

  1. Your email address was unreadable and my email bounced back - ref German courses

    sheba.edu@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your email address was unreadable and my email bounced back - ref German courses

    sheba.edu@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete