I have been grown up in the middle of gloomy version of poverty that severely escalated as the result of family break down, my parents divorced while I was only a couple years old; that technically determined my fate to be raised by abusive father and step mother. My mom saving her life, left us, my siblings and I with no option, and fled away from the capital, Addis Ababa, where she ensures significant distance from my dad. At the age of eight my dad after being hospitalized for several months passed away. A few months later my aunt, in dad’s line, took me to her house to raise me.
However, as she was poor, it was pretty hard to her to feed and send me school. Therefore, in that very young age I started to bear the responsibility of wining my daily bread by going out and carrying people’s stuff in the market places. I think this led me to go out on the streets and make my own life. After a couple years of stay with my aunt, I left her and joined the agony of street life near to my dad’s place that is around the head quarter of Serving In Mission (SIM) close to Black Lion Hospital.
My older brother who was already supporting his livelihood by shining shoes bought me some shoe shining materials so that I may also support myself. Living in the street other than the indecency of obtaining basic needs to survive, it exposed me to various physical and verbal abuses inflected by other senior street guys, the police and even the society. Suffering in the agonies of street life, God started to stretch out his love through the missionaries I came to know while shining their shoes. It was through the missionaries I first came to be introduced with the Lord and even sent to school by one of the missionaries called Yvonne Mildred. My life tremendously started to change holistically, spiritually as well as physically. The six years of misery ended with joining my brother and sister to live together and with the inspiration to lead other thousands of street kids to decent life humanity deserves.
The ministry I am imprinted to serving is already flourishing in creating hope to the kids on the streets and the local kids who hardly maintains their needs from their parents. The ministry, with the vision of displaying the love of God through serving the street and under privileged youths in the community, adopted the following principal objectives: Character development; Paving educational opportunity; Socialization of street kids; and Providing basic needs such as food and shelter. In order to implement these essential objectives we have planed to gather the kids around the soccer teams; accordingly, we have teamed up the kids in to six groups and undertook a tournament. We believed the soccer teams significantly serve our objectives particularly in taming the kids in discipline, obviously in Christian values, and socialization with each other and the communities.
Currently, we have a total of hundred and one kids from whom more than half of them are street kids and the rest are from poor families. As many of them raised, so to say, in the street, it is not easy to figure how old they are since they do not have any birth certificate. But, they can be estimated from five to ten and between ten and fifteen. The non street kids live in terribly deteriorated shanty houses and most of them raised by single mothers. Therefore, even if they go to school hardly provided with food and learning materials. Because of this many of them seldom attend school, instead they go out to market places to find some work such as carrying sacks. The situation of the street kids is severely terrible. Their daily food is either obtained from restaurant left over or from begging on the street. Regarding shelter they sleep along the side walk and under drainages of the road. This extremely worsens during the rainy season. Schooling is unthinkable to the street kids.
Based on the support you guys brought us we were able to offered the kids some sport materials so that they may gather.
Besides, we managed to feed them once in a week by raising money from different sources; however, due to financial impediment we hardly mange to continue. In the previous couple weeks in collaboration with the Youth For Christ Ethiopia we gave them summer schooling.
The ministry desperately seeks your assistance in prayer and financial support so that according to our plan the kids may be fed continuously and sent to school. Along side striving to provide permanent shelter to the street kids in the long run, we are finding a temporary sheltering, for the street kids, by renting; in order to do so we need a financial support.
I am so excited to hear from you that you already have the enthusiasm to support us in anyway possible and that’s realy a great help for all of the kids and i just wanna say thank you so much!!!
Blessings,
Ephrem
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