Moms 4 Ethiopia

Wednesday, 9 April 2014 at 13:00

A local organization raise $35,000 to support women, children and education in Ethiopia.

WOODSTOCK -- After adopting her daughter from Ethiopia, Shelley Green knew she had to do more.

Green, Founder and Chair of Mothers With A Heart For Ethiopia in the Woodstock area says after witnessing first hand the unbelievable poverty and vast differences between our countries, she and two other adoptive mothers felt they had to respond to their needs. "In meeting many Ethiopian leaders we recognized that it's not that the capability is not in that country, it most definitely is, it's just that they don't have the resources that we have so our organization has been formed to be a fundraising organization and to encourage people here to give of our abundance. That makes a tremendous difference in a country that has an incredible number of needs."

The strictly volunteer-based group formed in 2010 and have since grown to an organization of 90 in that time. Mothers With A Heart For Ethiopia concentrate on raising funds and building awareness to support women, children and education in Ethiopia.

This past weekend, the organization held their annual Gems & Java, hoping to raise $21,000 for the projects they support. They not only met their goal but surpassed it substantially by collecting an impressive $35,000.

At the first two events, they raised $7,000 and $16,700 respectively. Last June, a group of nine volunteers visited the country to carry out some of the projects they support including the delivering of school kits to students, providing programming to four orphanages and funding to two women's empowerment groups to name a few.

Green hopes to continue to grow their organization and says they are always looking for new volunteers. "There's many different ways for people to get involved in our work. We are a completely volunteer organization so we can make use and benefit from many different skill sets and people who have different amounts of time to give as well. So we're just really open to hearing from people who are interested in getting involved so we that can figure out what a good fit for them would be and to assess how they might be able to carry our work forward."

For more information on Mothers With A Heart For Ethiopia or to learn more on becoming a volunteer, visit http://www.moms4ethiopia.ca/index.html or their Facebook page.