• $5000 will provide food & coffee for one year to 10,000 homeless individuals
  • $3500 will send one individual to a full term of the Ve’ahavta Street Academy
  • $1000 will provide dinner for 150 homeless guests at the Ve’ahavta Passover Seder
  • $500 will provide notebooks to 350 children for one year
  • $250 will sponsor one prize to a winner of the Creative Writing Contest for the homeless
  • $100 will provide coffee for one week to 250 homeless individuals
  • $18 will give one child school supplies for one year
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Kulam Rings in 2011 in Ethiopia!

Together with our partners Ve’ahavta and JDC (jdc.org) we’re so pleased to wish you a happy New Year! We’ve just returned from Ethiopia where we were working on our new school and medical projects, as well as looking at new potential projects for this coming year. We’re excited to share a piece of our trip with you.

The construction of our school in Shumargie is progressing really well. The foundation and site work are complete, all walls are up, the roof is under construction and the school is scheduled to be operating by end of February. We spent time helping the contractor Daniel mix cement, stack cinder blocks and build support beams. But we never could have accomplished so much without the incredible help of the Kornfeld and Recht families from Denver – thank you!!

We met with the teachers, students and community leaders and their appreciation and excitement for the new school is overwhelming. The school will allow over 60 students to study in a facility where they are not exposed to wind, dust, rain, and distracted by animals roaming about. We learned that students’ academic results significantly improve when they can learn in a facility like ours. We are very proud that our Shumargie school will change the reality, for the better, of the entire Shumargie community. Each student will receive a Kinder Kit – a new school bag filled with school supplies – donated by our partner Ve’ahavta. Currently students are using UN grain bags as their school bags and school supplies are limited. Kinder Kits really are a big deal!

Our Medical projects with Dr Rick Hodes are progressing well. The 11 young Ethiopians who had major heart surgery in India are recovering successfully. The vital medicines that we sponsored were and are instrumental in their recoveries. We spent much time meeting with Dr Rick’s patients, visiting his clinic and listening to the medical needs of his work. He even had us de-worm an entire village! It is truly amazing to see firsthand the lives that Dr Rick is saving every day. He has shown us how with very little we can change the reality for children in Ethiopia and provide them with a promising future!

We visited other villages and looked at potential future projects from schools, to well and medical care. One water well which costs approximately $3,500 eliminates the long walk that women have to make to collect water. This allows them to put energy into other activities including returning to school and the community is able to drink clean water rather than water full of disease. The contribution of this one well improves the health of an entire community!

Through your generosity over the past six months, our fundraising efforts have been a huge success. And we haven’t wasted a second or a penny! We are proud to inform you that our two first projects are nearing completion on budget and on schedule and that our Kulam work has only begun. Upon completion of our current projects we will launch our next round of projects to continue to make a positive difference in the lives of Ethiopians and now Rwandans by contributing to the Agahoza Youth Village for orphans of the Genocide.

Thank you for your continued support and interest. We look forward to sharing our progress with you as we move forward with Kulam and these wonderful projects.

Wishing you and yours a happy and peaceful new year.

Benjamin, Julie & the entire Kulam Team