The School of St Yared Issue 9 November 2014 Fighting Poverty Through Education

Face to face with Lucy

Stone soldiers and guards man the garden area of The National Museum adding to the imposing entrance. For our students the opportunity to visit this centre brings their history lessons to life.

The star of the Museum is ‘Lucy’ Addis Ababa’s most famous resident. Discovered in 1974, ‘Lucy’ is a collection of fossilised bones dating back 3.2 million years .

Inspired by repeated playings of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" at a celebratory party on the day

the specimen was found, researchers gave it the Beatles' mod moniker.

There’s a large display of royal paraphernalia on the ground floor including the gigantic carved wooden throne of Emperor Haile Selassie. The students also got to see an impressive collection of Ethiopian artwork, artefacts and examples of traditional weapons, jewellery, musical instruments and tools.

Grade 5 student (and recent Academic Award winner) Bereket Muluken wrote up a report on the class excursion. You can read it on page 5.

Thank you so much for your support https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-School-of-St-Yared-Ethiopia/137056528009

Lessons were taken out of the classroom at the beginning of this term for our Grade 5 students as they boarded the bus for a school excursion to The National Museum in Addis Ababa.

“I love learning, when I am older I will know more and it will have a big impact on my life.” !At 12 years of age, Bereket Muluken is passionate about learning and studying hard. !Bereket and his grandfather Gebrehiwot were recently honoured guests of the local Woreda where he received the ‘Best Academic achievement at school” award for the last school year. !Bereket, along with fellow outstanding classmate Alazar Abebe (pictured right) consistently tops the school with outstanding academic results. School Director Mr Fitsum joined Bereket and his Grandfather at the award ceremony and says Bereket is an impressive all round student. !“Bereket is not just a clever student and high achiever, he’s well disciplined and a natural leader. He’s been appointed a student leader and performs his duties with maturity and consideration.” !Bereket’s Grandfather and guardian Gebrehiwot remembers his own childhood in Tigrai where he spent his early years shepherding the family’s sheep as a young boy. He is extremely proud of his grandson. His heart is full of thanks to The School of St Yared and to Bereket’s Perth sponsors the Forward family. !“I am very proud of Bereket - I want to say thank you to Jacqui and Graham (Bereket’s sponsors) and to all of St Yared for all they do.” !

Bereket has never seen where his Grandfather grew up in the north of Ethiopia; but when he finishes his schooling his Grandfather hopes to take him to visit. !Bereket’s favourite subject is the IPC (International Primary Curriculum). !“I love the IPC and my new teacher. The subjects talk about the body, plants and the world. It’s good if I have knowledge. When I am bigger I will have a chance to do everything.”

Academic Award for outstanding St Yared student

Alazar Abebe, Bereket’s classmate and friend who also topped the school with his academic results.

Bereket with the Woreda’s Education Manager and the other top achieving students from local schools in the area.

Welcome to my home by Ledtu Derso (Lower KG student)

Ledtu is a very bright, curious child with a definite boyish grin he flashes often. He is an only, much loved child. He is very confident and loves asking questions about everything.

Ledtu lives with his mother. She was born in a country village and moved to Addis Ababa looking for work. While she was working as a maid she started a relationship with the guard working at the same compound. Sadly, as soon as Ledtu was born, his father disappeared and no one knows where he is. Ledtu asks lots of questions about his father and his disappearance and still misses him very much.

Ledtu’s mother is now struggling to support herself and her son. Some people help her by giving her small jobs of washing clothes and she makes injera (Ethiopian flat bread) to sell. Her greatest wish is to see her child grow and graduate. Before she came to the city, that was her own dream, to study and get a good job. She expresses great gratitude at the opportunity that Ledtu has at The School of St Yared.

Ledtu mother’s devotion to her son is obvious in his happy, playful nature. He enjoys experiencing new things and is very curious about the world. He hopes to one day be a Biologist and study animals. As one of our new students, Ledtu’s teachers say he’s settled into school well and shows great enthusiasm.

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Ledtu is one of a number of students yet to be sponsored if you’d like more information about sponsorship, donations or other ways you can help or contribute to The School of St Yared contact Ann-Maree at

sponsorship@schoolofstyared.com Thank you all so much.

This month we meet Ledtu Derso one of our new students and his family. Sharing our home visits with you is a privilege and the only way to fully understand more about our extraordinary student’s lives. Each of our school families are extremely impoverished but their stories and circumstances are all different. Like all our students Ledtu is very proud of his family and as you can see in these photos, rarely stops smiling.

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-

that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only

power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. ”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

National Pride was the overwhelming emotion of Flag Day celebrations at The School of St Yared this year. !Students read their poems, performed a drama, explained the meaning behind the flag design and of course finished with traditional dancing and raising the country’s flag to celebrate the 7th Ethiopian National Flag Day. !It was a time of learning and unification as The School of St Yared students joined the rest of the country in celebrating Ethiopia. !Flag Day has taken on great importance. This new flag was introduced and accepted in 1996 (western calendar). School Director, Mr Fitsum tells us there are about 85 different tribes in Ethiopia, some very few in number and while their languages, customs and traditions differ everyone is united under this one flag.

The colours of the flag have very specific meanings: Green - recalls the land and progress

Yellow - peace and hope Red - strength, blood sacrifice and heroism

Blue - peace !Miss Hirut’s message to the students was “We will make our country one of the great nations. Study hard and you can make it so.”

National Flag Day

Our Flag - a poem by Belen Tesfaye Grade 5B!(translated into English)!!Our flag, our flag !We have the goal it is yours. !We have the people that have the prosperity !We have the people who love and long live!We have peace and unity with this flag!Our flag has a colour of green, yellow and red!We have defended all the matters!but we haven’t had any defeat!Ethiopia our country, we just have to feel free with you!We have peace, we have prosperity for our children!We have love and peace!We have a great culture!We have Ethiopian flag !We have a great team with it!We just have to keep it with our hearts !

Belen Tesfaye from Grade 5B (right) reading her poem about the National Flag.

So, what’s new…

At that day everyone were happy to see Lucy and go to the museum and at the morning most students were talking about the museum. And guess what? We will visit there. Now it’s time to lunch everyone eat his lunch quickly and get in the bus but except Grade 5 students most students, were sad and I get in the bus and in the bus the students were singing about our school, other songs, they laugh and relaxed themselves then we arrived there at 08.25 and now the main thing began.

When we enter in the museum we saw many things like our soldiers prepared by mud and stone, and many things that tell us about Ethiopia and inside the class we see many things and we saw guns which Ethiopian soldiers fought to Italy’s by that gun, swords and this all things are useful for the war and the come in Ethiopia in 1928 up to 1933 that means for 5 years then Ethiopian people fought to Italy by this all things which are mentioned above. And we saw the place which Queen and King sit. Also many people which were the Queen, King, Prime Minister.

And we are now in Lucy’s class. She was in a mirror box and her parts were broken and they are in the box separately. And the amazing thing about Lucy is she liven for 3.18 Million years. And also there was Meningitis. Also she was like Lucy and stay in the mirror box. And they are very useful for their country because many people visit them by money so they are very important for their country. And also for additional we visited a thing that have a circle shape but not full circle and use for a war to protect the soldiers from a sword. And this are the most things which we visited on Thursday and at the last we sat on one place and talked a little then go back to our home.

And we all are proud what we have and our culture.

Ethiopia live forever.

National Museum Visit!By Bereket Muluken Year 5B !

(Bereket wrote this piece in English class unassisted)

Well apart from the whole school getting vaccinated against Meningitis, most of the news involves community life. We celebrated the graduation of two staff from their degree courses. (Due largely to financial reasons, many teachers arrive in teaching with a diploma. Pursuing a degree course is usually done part time ‘after hours’ - making for long days!). !We also celebrated the births of beautiful babies to our secretary and two KG teachers and grieved with two staff and a student who lost siblings to illness or accident. All a reminder that education happens in the wider context of life and family. !We did have a lightning visit by the founder of HFC, Jacqui Gilmour. She visited the school, helloed the staff, opened a heart surgery unit (largely donated by her husbands charity) and has since bounced off to India (with Yared) taking a number of very sick children from Addis to have heart surgery there. A whirlwind of energy! !

On the school front, the library reading program is back up and running, Friday afternoon electives are being implemented (although we need to do some more work in this new area) and we have kitted out our First Aid room. We have had challenges with our water supply and are currently waiting for testing to be complete, with students bringing water from home in the interim. !Mid semester exams start this week as per Government requirement. The School will also be inspected this week as part of our arrangement with the Ethiopian Government regarding our charitable status. We expect this process to be constructive as we move towards renewing our Operational Agreement for the next three years.

Getting to know …Fitsum Kindeya - School Director

Since taking on the role of Director at The School of St Yared, Fitsum Kindeya has not only found himself clinging to the school office window sill as flood water swirled around the desks but he’s already assisted in cementing a level of professionalism with all school staff. We caught up with him this month to get to know him a little better.

Fitsum was born in the Tigrai region in the north of Ethiopia in a small village. He completed his early schooling in Tigrai then attended University in Addis Ababa and completed two degrees. He was appointed Director of The School of St Yared this year and we caught up with him recently.

“I‘ve worked 20 years in educational background. First I was a teacher for seven years. Then I was a School Director then an Educational Officer at a Woreda and then I joined Child Fund Ethiopia working as an educational specialist for 14 years. Then I joined a child and family organisation and I was serving about 130,000 children and the area covered from Addis Ababa to Oromiya. The program that I led focussed on education, health and income generating activity. I joined HFC and I am now working as a school principal/director.

Fitsum is married with two children - an 8 year old daughter and a son who’s 15 years old. He has six brothers and one sister.

“I was impressed at what St Yared was doing before I joined. Now I am here I will do my best for the betterment of the children, especially in their education. Given their economic background of their families, these children may be the responsible family member after a short period of time, so as a citizen I will put all of my effort for the betterment and achievement of the children and also for the excellence of our school also.

“I am very interested for us to become a school of excellence in Addis Ababa - for student performance, for their discipline and their social interaction and their all round development, I will try and do my best with all my teaching staff as well as non teaching staff.”

Fitsum says parent and community participation is vital at The School of St Yared.

“The school is not an island it is part of the community. You cannot achieve what you need to achieve if it’s not supported at home and in the community so we have to have a chance for the parents, the families and the community to participate in the school.”

Fitsum you work very long hours but what do you do to relax?

“To relax I am very interested in swimming. As you know Addis is not comfortable for swimming but sometimes if I am out of Addis if I went to Lake Langano I will swim in that. From the age of 7 I was swimming. I would like to teach all the students how to swim. I would love that.”

Keep up to date with our Facebook page: !https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-School-of-St-Yared-Ethiopia/137056528009!

HOW GREAT THOU ART

Australians, Helen Oakey, her son Eyob and her mother Annie all

traveled to Addis Ababa recently bringing with them a case full of

books for The School of St Yared.!!Thanks so much to Helen and her

colleagues at ACT Assembly, to Ros at St Philips Kindergarten and

Prudy McLaughlin for fundraising to buy new books, donating second hand valuable teacher resource

books and for being so generous.

Kidus, Fiameta and Fikerte, all from Grade 5, completed this mosaic as part of the Friday Elective program. !

Using small pieces of coloured paper they designed and produced this work as a team. !

Miss Hirut is teaching the sewing/creativity elective and students are initiating and producing their own works from

mosaics to hand sewing garments. !Learning new skills and using their imaginations is a great way

to end the school working week.

Mosaic: an art form using small pieces of materials to make a unified image. Paper, glass, stone, mirror, shells and marble are just some of the

materials featured in mosaics.

The earliest known examples of mosaics were found at a temple building in Abra, Mesopotamia and date back to to the second half of 3rd

Millennium BC. Working out the best way to arrange the small pieces can lead to complicated mathematical problems. Finished pieces can be as small as an earring or as large as a house. It will be exciting to see what

our students come up with as they progress through the elective.

A new page… Library NewsOur Library program started in earnest this month with the selection of Library monitors and allocated lunchtimes for classes. !So every lunch time and recess, the library is full of children spilling out onto the walkway reading books. They read everything from amharic story books to english fiction and many students have a great fascination with science and gravitate towards non fiction with the life of animals, dinosaurs and space all very popular. !The student monitors take their responsibilities very seriously are very strict and run a ‘tight ship’ ensuring all students read quietly.