The family was left with out a penny, as her husband was the only bread winner and his income did not go beyond the everyday needs of the family.

It was in this gloomy condition that a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) operating in the area approached her and began to take care of her child, who is now a ninth grader. “They reached for me at my moment of despair and when every relative of mine was tired of my cries for their support,” Aberu says, recalling her situation before Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organization (JeCCDO) came to her rescue.

Now she has got seed money from the organization for running her small business of buying and selling commodities such as potatoes, onions and the like. 

By the time Aberu and her boy were in crises, JeCCDO with financial support obtained from Cordaid, The Netherlands based funding organization, was implementing an integrated urban community development program in four cities of Ethiopia, including Bahir Dar where Aberu is residing.

The community taking over
Community based orphan children’s support is the project that rescued Aberu’s child from dropping out of school and made her a small business owner. The project is aimed at supporting orphan children living in the locality formerly known as Kebele 12, in Bahir Dar. Here Aberu and 516 other households, each having six household members on average.

“Since we launched the project in 1997 until we handed it over to the community council eight years later, we had been supporting a total of over 70 vulnerable and orphan children every year,” says Bayable Balew, Senior Social Development Program Officer at JeCCDO.

The Community Development Council (CDC), which is formed by residents of Kebele 12, who were working in various committees of JeCCDO’s projects, took over the project activities at the end of 2005.

The council is now implementing the projects started by JeCCDO and additional development interventions of its own. These includes: saving and credit for women, environmental sanitation and health program, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS awareness raising, construction of communal facilities and the like.  

The CDC has received from the NGO income generation blocks of buildings and running costs for one year until the income generation schemes become fully operational.
 
“As an independent legal and recognized institution, now we are expanding our activities by networking ourselves with governmental and non-governmental organizations,” says Agere Bogale, Development Facilitator and one of the 72 CDC members. 

Basic needs
In collaboration with World Food Program, currently, the community is providing food aid permanently for 231 orphan and vulnerable children in the locality. According to Agere, the number of orphan children in GisheAbay kebele, the lowest administrative tier of local government that comprises of other two localities, is estimated to be above 300.

In addition, six tutors and one supervisor are employed by the CDC and are tutoring 186 students of grade one to six permanently.

Agere believes that it is possible for the CDC to reach out all the orphans and vulnerable children in the surrounding communities by expanding its current activities. The organization is nevertheless limited in the locality. She says that they are looking for funds to that end.

Critics
Critics often mention donors’ and NGOs’ failure to build capacity of communities as the major cause for dependency of most developing countries on aid. Researches show that donors cut their funding before ensuring communities’ potential of sustaining their projects on their own. To change this scenario, the concept of aid for development is being advocated by African countries and major donors.

Speaking about the successful handover of the development projects to the community, Mulugeta Gebru, Executive Director of JeCCDO says: “The secret is simple; it is all about prioritizing the needs of the community and organizing them is the solution for sustainability.”

Depending on specific donor funding and limiting a project to a specific phase-out period is often the reason for the failure of many NGO activities, according to Mulugeta. “These organizations have to diversify their funding until they make sure that the community is empowered to take over and run it properly after phase-out,” he says.

JeCCDO was established in Ethiopia in 1985 as a national non-governmental organization. In addition to Cordaid, the NGO is capable of generating funding from other donors to add three more years to its five-year program in Bahir Dar for activities opted to  empowering and handing over the projects successfully to the community and ensuring its sustainability.

According to the executive director, currently JeCCDO is replicating similar community based development projects in eight other Kebeles in Bahir Dar.

In addition to integrated urban community based childcare and community empowerment, the organization is engaged in grants management and partnership development, and organizational development in the face of decentralization.

Mulugeta Gebru notes the importance of sharing their experience among different development actors. In his words: “I think other actors can learn from this project the need to involve the community in identifying priority intervention areas and establishing a sense of ownership in their minds at the very beginning of their projects, besides continuously engaging them in follow-up activities.”

Keywords: Ethiopia society