Ethiopia - From health to the home: Salesian support for the poorest does not exclude any area

29 June 2020
Ethiopia - From health to the home: Salesian support for the poorest does not exclude any area

(ANS - Gambella) - 45 km from Gambella, in western Ethiopia, a wedge of land that creeps into neighboring Sudan and that during the warmer months registers temperatures that reach even 50 ° C, there is the small center of Abobo. Here, in 2002, a good story began, when a group of Italian and Spanish volunteers set up a small health center, together with the local Salesians.

Today, after fifteen years, the Abobo Health Center is the symbol of a community that is not only at the service of the 4,000 inhabitants of the village, but helps about 20,000 people in the area, reaching to embrace as many as 200,000 people throughout the region, being the area's only one health center.

Alongside the health project, the educational structures, an oratory and a multipurpose room, the parish and a kindergarten for over 100 children were born over time, as well as two small kindergartens in neighboring villages. The entire population of the area is also supported to meet basic needs starting from water and food.

Meanwhile, the common challenges for survival in the region bring different ethnic groups, of Sudanese origin, together with Ethiopian communities from the plateau and other local ethnic groups.

One of the initiatives that is carried out in Abobo, through the support of the Salesians, is the support for the most deprived families in the maintenance or construction of their homes. In this region, in fact, most families, often with many children, still live in huts, in precarious sanitation, and certainly - these days - without any possibility of complying with the minimum prevention measures against the pandemic.

Furthermore, due to the deforestation taking place in the region, the availability of dry grass for the roof and wood for the buildings is decreasing. And so the houses remain perpetually exposed to the weather and with makeshift roofs that must be redone every three years on average.

Odiel, Ayelech and Ariet ... are just some of the beneficiaries of the new initiative that the Salesians have thought of for these people: to help some large families and with very young children to renovate their home! And build new ones also for people with chronic or disabling diseases, who have no support.

The aid project born 18 years ago in Abobo could now reach its "maturity" with this concrete and necessary service for many families in need.

Further information is available on: www.missionidonbosco.org

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ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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