Last week Girma Birru Geda, the former Ethiopian Ambassador to the U.S., visited the WEEMA office in Addis Ababa. While this was the Ambassador’s first visit to the Ethiopia office, WEEMA leadership has had the opportunity to meet with him two times in Washington, D.C. WEEMA Country Director Tewodros (Teddy) Belachew and the staff shared a coffee ceremony with the visitors and presented the Ambassador with an update on our work including current strategy and future plans.
Initiatives discussed included:
Expanding access to clean water and sanitation facilities
Improving access to quality education
Establishing a comprehensive public library network
Strengthening women’s self-help groups
Building beekeeping capacity and cooperatives
Empowering people with disabilities
Developing and implementing digital health
Strengthening reproductive maternal newborn and child health
Treating curable blindness
The Ambassador had a number of comments and questions and asked the WEEMA team to continue to focus on women and girls as change agents, urging them not to let go of this goal and to make everything we do women-centered.
He was curious to know which WEEMA projects the community is most interested in - is it water? health? economic empowerment? It was rewarding to be able to clarify that the focus of WEEMA’s work is driven by the community’s interests which means that all of WEEMA’s work is valued by the community.
The Ambassador left with very positive feelings about the visit, plans to continue to support WEEMA’s work, and offered to connect our team with new government officials for potential partnerships.
It was a great honor to host the Ambassador.
To learn more about these initiatives, click here. Or to support WEEMA’s work, click on the donate button below.
