The Oasis Foundation
Grace Village
Ethiopia

Summary

The vision of The Oasis Foundation is to help meet the needs of the vulnerable and marginalized people of Tahtay Koraro in Ethiopia. We sit, talk, listen and try to best understand what these people perceive their plight to be. Our goal is to help the vulnerable and marginalized meet their basic needs. These needs include food, shelter, safe water and basic health requirements that lead to equal opportunities and personal dignity.

In the Foundation's review of the integrated development program for vulnerable and marginalized individuals, groups and communities, we have found that the weakest members have always been the children. The younger they are, the more protection they require, so it is in this spirit that The Oasis Foundation has concentrated its activities on the children of the community.

Grace Village is where complete physical, mental, emotional and spiritual coverage is guaranteed until a child is able to provide for her/ himself. This might include, but is not limited to, pre-school, primary or secondary school education as well as vocational or university education through international sponsorship of the individual child.

Grace Village also focuses on children that have been orphaned by their parents but still have a surviving relative in the community to provide their nurturing. This may seem rudimentary, but sometimes with only a small monthly stipend, further education may be permitted for the child.

Although this approach is good, it has its gaps. Many rural communities do not have adequate educational facilities and meet under trees or canvas with no seats, desks, supplies or teaching tools. Grace Village is taking the necessary steps to see that schools are made available along with teaching tools and other equipment so that education might be accessed by the most poor and underserved children of the region.

Once the needs of the children are met, the next step is to examine the needs of the community in which those children live and learn. The majority of the village population are subsistence farmers utilizing poor farming techniques. An inadequate water supply hinders adequate farming production. A variety of improved farming methods are needed to increase farming outputs and the food and water supply issues ameliorated, thus bringing a sense of dignity and independence to the whole community.

The health of a given community is reflected in its children, and for this reason the aim of trying to support vulnerable communities through health education is of paramount importance. The Oasis Foundation plans to teach topics pertinent, appropriate and targeted to the community's vulnerabilities. In addition, the Oasis Foundation helps women with childbirth injuries that have been outcast from their homes and communities reach a medical facility in the town of Mekelle. We have accomplished this by creating a Fistula Waiting Area in Tahtay Koraro for women with childbirth injuries in the whole of North-Western Tigray.

In addition, the Oasis Foundation would like to help each community enable their own leadership to develop from within rather than from without. The Oasis Foundation seeks leaders that have the potential to develop from within the marginalized community, helping them to help themselves by acquiring business skills and other training specific to their own perceived needs. This will help achieve the goal of bringing honor, respect and self-confidence to the new leaders as well as the entire community.

The simple idea of a once ostracized and shamed individual being able to return to their community is the right of every human being. It is then that a healthy community can negotiate with their neighbors from a sense of confidence, pride and respect rather than in shame.

The Oasis Foundation would like to thank you for taking the time to read our plan and understand our vision. If you would like to be part of this exciting program or have any questions we would be delighted to talk to you.

Current Status

From that beginning we have moved on the help the community around us; assisting women headed householders to establish themselves as cooperatives for agriculture; helping the people living with aids with extra food during their initial treatment of ART; we also have a counsellor who can talk to the people and encourage them; when we have the funds we also build schools for the local communities, so many children are attending school under tents; we have a small fistula waiting area where we collect women with childbirth injuries who can rest before going on further to the centre in Mekelle for surgery; we go from village to village teaching about safe delivery, preventing obstetric fistula and helping with midwifery generally by medi-evacuating labouring mothers to the hospital. These are some of what we are doing.

We have 43 children resident at Grace Village, 13 former fistula mothers, five AIDS + children and 3+ AIDS mothers. We sponsor in the community some 200 children who stay with family and we help with school costs and any medical expenses they may have, we also save a small sum for them so that they have a little bit of money when they finish school.