GondarLink has been delighted to associate closely with the wonderful work of Kate Fereday Eshete at The Kindu Trust and, in particular, to help her with major funding for her imaginative new activity called the Clean Gondar Project. In return for two hours' work cleaning the dirtiest parts of the city on a Friday morning, 40 children aged 8-15 who live on the streets are rewarded with breakfast and lunch, soap and a shower, and shoes or clothing. Sacks and rubber gloves are provided by the Trust, with shovels and wheelbarrows supplied by local district councils.

Each street child participates in the project for four weeks only, receiving shoes the first week, followed by trousers, t-shirt and a jacket in the following weeks. The project aims to teach the boys to work for food rather than to beg. It also demonstrates to the rest of the community how little effort is needed to get one's local area looking well-kept and decent.

Mr Mulugeta, district chairman of a very poor area near the city centre, said, "The street boys from the Clean Gondar Project worked in our district each Friday for five weeks, cleaning children's play areas and other public places where litter was a real problem."

The project also enables The Kindu Trust to get to know the street boys better which in turn can sometimes help the boys in different ways, as Mr Tesfa-Selassie, an employee who helps run the project, explained. "This month we reunited two beggar boys with their poor mothers in the Simien Mountains, supporting them in their homes with sponsorship, and we also paid for six street boys with health problems (including badly infected wounds) to be treated at a local clinic."

The Clean Gondar Project was recently filmed for Ethiopian Television by the Amhara State News Agency and for French Television by Alexandre and Sonia Poussin. Alexandre is a journalist and well-established travel writer in France. To read his article (in French) about the Project go to
www.routard.com/mag_feuilleton.asp?id_feuilleton=91.

To further support Kate with this project, send your donation directly to The Kindu Trust, marking it for the Clean Gondar Project. A donation of £50 covers all the costs of running the Project for one Friday morning session. See The Kindu Trust's 'Donate' page for more information.

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