What is the Salamta Family Project?

The Selamta Family Project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is a community model for creating life-long families and repairing a social fabric that has been ripped apart by the AIDS pandemic, poverty and despair. With minimal funding, and an entirely volunteer organization, we are reuniting lost brothers and sisters, embracing disenfranchised women, creating vibrant, successful new families, and offering support that reaches deep into the surrounding community.

In Ethiopia alone, there are over five million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS and other tragediesy. The most fortunate of these children are cared for by remaining family members, who are themselves stretched beyond their means. But the overwhelming majority are separated from their siblings, and abandoned to the streets or into orphanages where they routinely encounter violence, predation and abuse. They are joined in poverty by millions of similarly marginalized elders and women, who have lost their means of sustenance, as their adult children and husbands are lost to AIDS.

The family structure that teaches care, respect and responsibility, and forms the foundation of a strong, productive society, has come apart in regions devastated by AIDS. For children to become healthy, independent and productive adults, they need room to grow in a predictable home, supported by proper nutrition, health care, education and love. The Selamta Family Project is proving that these objectives are not beyond our reach. Over the past three years, we have learned the power of a simple formula:

When a child arrives at the Selamta Children’s Center, they are welcomed by as many as fifty new brothers and sisters who live as large, warm family at the Children’s Center or in one of our 7 Small Group Homes

Upon arrival, the Selamta Family staff immediately mobilizes to reunite the child with brothers and sisters, who may live on the streets or in government orphanages. We locate extended family members and bring them into the circle. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends are all welcomed to visit the Children’s Center, and urged to become part of the children's lives again. The kids really love being able to see their extended family…it provides reassurance about a sick grandparent, HIV infected mother or older sibling.

During the first few months, our Selamta staff and volunteer ambassadors work to stabilize the child medically, nutritionally and emotionally. Our new children quickly realize that the environment is one of love and respect, and they learn to trust in the safety and joy of the Selamta family.

As this healing takes place, we are welcoming new mothers into the Selamta Children’s Center, where they work with the children and are educated thoroughly in parenting, health care and homemaking. These once-marginalized women re-enter the community as "moms" and "aunties" to a household of new sons and daughters. Soon, the two women and their new family of eight to ten children emerge, and they are relocated into a clean, modern Small Group Home nearby the Center. The Selamta Family’s Small Group Homes are not temporary or "foster" placements: they are brother and sister, son and daughter, nieces and nephews