The Selamta Project

Overview

Our Selamta Family Project changes the lives of orphaned and vulnerable children and displaced women who occupy the margins of Ethiopian society.  Our family based care model successfully addresses more than their basic needs.  The Selamta Family Project reunites extended families, sustains weakened households and rebuilds families affected by HIV/AIDS, post-conflict issues, and other diseases. The Selamta Family Project helps reweave the fabric of a society overburdened by extreme poverty, food instability and stretched community resources - one family at a time.

In Ethiopia, the consequences of poverty and disease strain families and entire communities. Children whose parents are chronically ill or living with HIV are at greatest risk. In many instances, a sibling group that loses one or both parents finds themselves alone with the eldest child acting as head-of-household, caring for younger brothers and sisters.  They have no legal protection, and often, dishonest adults force them from their family homes onto the streets while they are still grieving the loss of their parents. In Ethiopia alone, there are five million orphaned and vulnerable children living on the streets or government orphanages.  

Street life splinters grieving sibling groups. Sometimes extended family members or a government orphanage will care for younger brothers and sisters. Inter-country adoption agencies place very young children or babies in homes outside of Ethiopia.  Typically, eldest children continue to live on the streets, where they suffer from hunger, abuse and predation.  In response to this tragic situation, Selamta reaches out to teenagers, large sibling groups and individual children, welcoming them into care and legal protection at the Selamta Family Project.

Social agencies and the Ethiopian government provide few social safety nets for vulnerable children or displaced women.  The social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS leaves widowed women particularly vulnerable; they do not have access to education, training, health care or economic opportunity.  They live in abject poverty, often times begging on the streets with their children in tow, or doing menial labor for unscrupulous employers.  At Selamta, we reach out marginalized women welcoming them into our Women’s Training Program and helping them regain a position of dignity and respect.

It is hard to imagine the level of abject grief and poverty endured by Ethiopia’s orphaned, vulnerable children and displaced women. Traditional development assistance programs and anti-poverty initiatives address their immediate need for food and shelter, but these programs do not adequately respond to Ethiopia’s long-term need for a cohesive society. The affects of HIV/AIDS, post-conflict issues and other diseases have eviscerated an entire generation of the adult population, interrupting the course of Ethiopia’s cultural traditions, values and family structures along the way. How can a society grow and prosper when its children are raising themselves, and mothers are begging on the streets?

The Selamta Family Project fills this void.  Selamta strengthens weakened families, and builds family where there is none. Over the past four years, Selamta has demonstrated how it creates lasting change in the social realm - one family at a time.  The Selamta Family Project has the capacity to change lives everywhere that HIV/AIDS, post-conflict issues and other diseases are ravaging the traditional family structure and weakening communities.

The impact created by the Selamta Family Project makes a significant difference in societies that need to regenerate their cultural, social and human capital. The Selamta Family Project model is replicable and represents a solution to the global orphan crisis and women living in poverty. The Selamta Family model will work where HIV/AIDS, post-conflict issues and poverty are taking their toll.  Join us as we rebuild families in places around the globe where there is great need!