Liwan & Dekia Project (LIW and LIW-D)
Ethiopia
Coordinated by Sandi Petersen rspetersen@optusnet.com.au
and Dee Andrews gjandrews1@bigpond.com
Individual student sponsorship or project sponsorship is available for this project
Liwan is a remote region made up of four villages, far from any road or services and is the home of the Shuro and Manja cultural groups. High maternal, infant and child mortality exists in Liwan, with women and children being particularly disadvantaged. Polygamy is common, and women (often married at puberty) have many children. They live in tiny tukels (mud and thatch huts) and have a very simple lifestyle.
WFA has been assisting Liwan 2007 with funding the building and running of a school, gravity-fed clean water system, food security including through oxen and seedlings, and through funding the building of a health-post in nearby Shittio village care. The school is co-run/supported by the government and the Catholic Church. In 2021 the school, previously only grade 1 to 4, has been raised to grade 5. Repairs to the school were funded over 2019 and 2020, and our current focus is rebuilding teachers accommodation and new latrines.
The Liwan Projects provide funds for development and relief needs for the Liwan community through child sponsorship and through donations for the school and health projects. In this project no individual child/family receives sponsorship money. Given the challenges in providing WFA with 6 monthly follow up photos and reports of the sponsored children, the sponsors are offered new children every 12-24 months. The funds are used for covering school, food security and health needs in the community.
Dekia is the largest town near Liwan and is where Liwan students go to attend upper grades of schooling. This has led to a number of Dekia projects, including the building of boys and girls boarding houses for Liwan students, including kitchen and shower/toilet blocks, and the building of additional classrooms for the Dekia school and providing sponsorship support for students and families in Dekia.
The Dekia Child Sponsorship Program has two parts: 1) Child sponsorship for the Boarding House Students (primarily from Liwan) in which no individual student receives money, but rather it is pooled and used to provide for food, hygiene, educational needs for all the Boarding Students, and 2) Child Sponsorship for children in Dekia in extreme poverty and need in which the individual child/family receives a portion of the sponsorship money to assist them in food security, educational and living costs, with the remaining amount being used for development or relief needs for the Dekia community.