(UNESCO) ‘Tsehai Loves Learning,’ an Ethiopian children’s television show sponsored by UNESCO, was honoured with an award at the Prix Jeunesse International 2008 Festival. The 2008 Next Generation Prize was bestowed upon the creators of the show, Whiz Kids Workshop, a local production company that focuses on serving Ethiopia through educational media.
Prix Jeunesse is the premier international festival recognising outstanding children’s television programming. It is held every two years in Munich. “Winning an award at the Prix Jeunesse is considered the highest honour in children’s media,” said Bruktawit Tigabu, the show’s co-founder.
UNESCO has been working with Whiz Kids Workshop since 2005 when they collaborated on developing educational children programmes addressing environmental issues. Currently, with the financial support of UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), UNESCO and Whiz Kids Workshop are training young people across Ethiopia to create animated content in local languages addressing development challenges.
According to Prix Jeunesse, the Next Generation Prize is awarded to “a production team that is innovative and inspired by a great idea that was produced under difficult circumstances.” The intention of the award is to promote talent that – with financial support, mentoring and consultation – promises to come up with great results in the future. As a result of the award, Whiz Kids Workshop will have an opportunity to work with the prize’s sponsors who will provide assistance with development, technical and creative advice throughout production of their next project.
‘Tsehai Loves Learning’ is an Amharic language educational show which is immensely popular among Ethiopian children. It began broadcasting on Ethiopian Television in September 2006. “For many of Ethiopia’s children, it is the closest thing to early childhood education they have ever received,” Shane Etzenhouser, the show’s other co-founder, said. ‘Tsehai Loves Learning’ aims to promote children’s development – academically, socially, and physically. The prize winning ‘Tsinat’ was one of the most popular episodes. ‘Tsinat’ is unique in that it teaches children how to help their friends cope with the death of a parent. The episode also included messages for adults on how to support orphans and children impacted by HIV and AIDS.
“The jury was hugely impressed by the programme’s ability to talk to children, to be creative as well as communicative, on an extremely limited budget,” said Prix Jeunesse in a statement. “Finally, we all felt that ‘Tsehai Loves Learning’ was inspired by a great idea born out of the needs of its audience – which after all is the basis of all great TV. The jury is delighted to extend this prize to Whiz Kids Workshop and to assist the team as they consider their next project.”
Shane Etzenhouser and programme manager, Redeit Alemu, attended the festival with the support of UNESCO and the Goethe Institute. “We were ecstatic to even be a finalist for these awards,” said Etzenhouser. “We are thrilled to prove that Africa can successfully provide high calibre, research-based, culturally relevant educational material for children with limited resources. It’s a proud moment for all of Ethiopia and for Africa,” said Alemu.
Dire Tune of Ethiopia celebrates her victory in the 1-hour race at the IAAF Golden Spike international athletics contest in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on Thursday. (Dan Krzywon/Associated Press)
(CBC) — Ethiopia’s Dire Tune set a new world record in the one-hour run during the Golden Spike Grand Prix meet in Ostrava, Czech Republic, Thursday.
Tune covered 18.517 kilometres in one hour. The previous record was held by Kenyan-born Tegla Lorupe, who now competes for Holland. Lorupe’s mark for the seldom run event has stood since 1998 when she ran 18.340 km on a track in Borgholzhausen, Germany.
Unlike other track events there is no set distance in the one-hour run. Runners complete as many laps as they can in the one-hour time allotment.
Earlier this year the 22-year-old Tune, who comes from Asalla in the Arsi region, won the 2008 Boston Marathon on April 21 with a time of 2:25:25 and the Houston Marathon in January in a personal best time of 2:24:40.
She is one of six females named to the Ethiopian Olympic marathon pool but at this point the Ethiopian federation has not named the three who will represent the country in Beijing. They have been training at a high-altitude training camp, 50 kilometres outside the capital of Addis Ababa.
Interest in the one-hour run was resurrected a year ago when two-time Olympic 10,000m champion Haile Gebrselassie, also from the Arsi region of Ethiopia, set the men’s world record in Ostrava.
“Haile broke the men’s one-hour world record on the same track,” said her manager Hussein Makke from his office in West Chester, Pa. “When I mentioned the meet director and I had talked about the women’s one-hour record attempt this year Dire jumped at the chance. She said it would put her name in the record books.”
Tune is married but has no children. With the money she earned from her Boston and Houston earnings she has built a new house in Addis Ababa
Yep, there you go again. The pictures of your shame and, for all practical purposes, your national identity, are running everywhere again. The terrifying pictures that show emaciated and famished children are popping up on our television screens and now thanks to the new media – the internet, more people are watching the pictures and reading heart wrenching stories of people trekking the land in search of food carrying their dying children.
Indications are that what we see is only the tip of the iceberg and only severe conditions and accessible cases are exploding on the media. God is the only one who has access to places like the Ogaden region, where government collective punishment, ban on international aid agencies such as the Red Cross, and the failure of the belg rains, have created a perfect storm for mass death. I hate imagining what it may look like there. See for example, this and this and this and this and this video for some latest devastating reports on big international media among many others.
The number of people going without food for days at a time and severe conditions of hunger come from all corners of the country, rural and urban, including Addis Ababa, where the majority of the city dwellers, we are finding out, are living under grueling starvation. Meles Zenawi’s government wants to make it look like that this is occurring in some “pockets” of the country, in a language quite reminiscent of the preceding governments. The TPLF and its cadres are angrily complaining that a report by international aid agencies that six million children are under severe malnutrition is exaggerated and think it is only 75,000 children and they are debating as if the number is static. But look at this to see how they lie through their teeth. Only last week TPLF officials said that there are 4.5 million people who need emergency food aid. From the governments own demographic statistics alone, we all know that children constitute the majority of the population. Now, make a conservative estimate that only half of the 4.5 million are children. You do the math. I am sure any nerd can see that no less than 2 million children are under severe malnutrition, and the number for all we know is rising. They can’t even lie sensibly. I don’t know how they differentiate the exaggerated from the unexaggerated. It appears that these sick TPLF politicians have a tolerable size of misery in their minds any way. If skeletal children are showing up around Shashemene and Arsi, in one of the most productive and wettest parts of the country, it is not hard to imagine what it would look like in the more arid areas where rainfall fluctuation is more recurrent. May be at this time people are not dying in mass and this may not be technically called famine, but it is not hard to imagine the magnitude of the suffering and the kind of hellhole most Ethiopians currently find themselves in.
The TPLF government blames everything and everybody but itself for the disaster created by its own misguided economic policies, their failure to strategically plan, their screwed up economic thinking, their criminal negligence and misplaced priorities. The same old debunked crap is being recycled to explain this shame again. The officials and their patronizing donors are still using the tired lie that “drought”, the failure of the seasonal rains, caused this tragedy. They use the words “drought” “dirq” in place of famine and huger, often interchangeably and in one sentence to help them conceal the hard truth. The fact that drought on one hand, and hunger and famine on the other, have no structural linkage has been an established knowledge now. For those of you who still get eluded, you can validate this by looking around the world where you will see countries that are hit harder by drought, or even are complete deserts, or even less resource fortunate than Ethiopia, but have no starving children popping up on your TV and computer screens. Drought is a source of misery, famine and hunger are rampant only in corrupt countries, those that live under dictatorships and intense internal conflicts and an unwilling to solve it.
The complaint for the suffering of our children and our people should be directed at all of us as a people and not against nature. Please get used to this notion that drought is not the natural cause of famine or hunger. Stop fooling yourselves. None of you are going to stop drought and make the rain fall. Rest assured that this problem is going to get worse as global climate trends show, but you can stop hunger and famine if you do the right thing – rise up against the real causes. Please stop dreaming that you can solve it by throwing a couple of dollars at it and it will get away. Many of us did that during the past famine cycles. I made the same noise five years and half ago (read it here). I am agonizing that I am going to do the same for this cycle again knowing full well that I will have to do the same during the next one. Those of you, who think you can fundraise your way through this tragedy, make sure to prepare to do the same for the next one.
In its excuse making craft, the TPLF has now added one more excuse -the global rise in food and oil prices. But they don’t tell you why this phenomenon chooses only Ethiopia for attack and picks our children for exhibition. In one of his regular lectures to those pathetic human beings sitting in his rubberstamp parliament, Meles Zenawi literally said that the current food crisis in Ethiopia is due to the fact that other people around the world have started eating more. According to his pervert logic the progress of other people is our doom, and for us to eat more, other people must eat less. Some of Meles’s people who think they are a little more clever are also using the word “malnutrition” in place of this acute hunger, as if to mean the problem is lack of balanced nutrition and make the problem look less severe. See for example, one TPLF pinhead trying to make this point here. This pitiful human being also has the temerity to blame Western journalists who spread the news to facilitate his beggary and people like me living in Diaspora who agonize in pain over this gruesome pictures instead of blaming his tribal chiefs who preside over the disaster. In his one page essay, this pinhead used the word “malnutrition” five times and fully avoided the real descriptive terms.
But ask these fair questions even if it means bearing the name callings by these apologists. Since they cannot argue the facts, they will resort to calling you extremist, hater, genocidal etc. But these are must ask questions. What happened to the double digit and near double digit economic growth statistics and the associated bragging that was being dished out over the last several years by Meles Zenawi and his cadres? Can’t we even pass a single seasonal failure of rainfall without seeing terrifying pictures of children with straw like hands and legs on televisions and the internet around the world? Or is it that we were being given the usual Meles Zenawi Tenquay economics and political crap? What has come off of our being the star aid recipient country in Sub-Sahara Africa and one of the most important destinations of Western aid in the world? What happens to nearly 25 billion dollars of aid pumped in the country over the past decade and half and the not so small amount of hard currency pumped in as remittance from a large Diaspora? What was that institution of beggary, the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA), doing before the pictures of the skeletons of the unfortunate kids exploded on our faces? Weren’t some TPLFites making a mockery of bread lines in Asmara a few weeks back? We all know Eritrea receives virtually no aid from the lords of poverty. Why is it that I don’t see skeletal children from there? Why is it that even less resource fortunate African countries than Ethiopia, and hit hard by the same drought and global food price rises, do not produce these kinds of agonizing pictures? I have seen pictures of hungry people from Zimbabwe and we all know the country lives under intense sanctions. Why is it that I don’t see skeletal pictures coming from there on Ethiopia’s level? The last time I checked the volume of water in Ethiopia is more than what we find in most of African countries and many more around the world. Who chose Ethiopia for this exhibition, the angry Gods? The only reason, in my view, that may make God angry, if he gets angry at all, must be the abuse of the gift he gave Ethiopia, our failure to solve our problems by holding the real culprits for our disaster accountable. I feel a pity for the people who are praying and bothering God for more rains. It is the wrong question to ask of Him. He made us the Water Tower of Eastern Africa, and gave us resources more than our fair share. What else are we bothering Him for? I am afraid we can end up angering Him for a completely different reason.
The answers to the questions I raised above are pure and simple in my view. In the famous expression of the 1992 Bill Clinton presidential campaign, it is the governance and the economic policy stupid. And it is our allowing our beautiful country to continue to be ruled by these misguided, selfish, ruthless tribal barons who shortchanged our needs for their selfish end of clinging to power. It is because of TPLF’s policies and misguided priorities that alienated the millions of us from freely participation in solving the problem. It is Meles Zenawi’s bone headed thinking that government instead of free, creative and imaginative citizens can develop a country of complex problems and needs. It is the corrupt tribal and exclusionary politics where government positions of technical decision making are given to ignorant and mediocre political cadres whose only merit is their servitude to Meles Zenawi. It is the condescending attitude of the TPLF tribal barons towards the capability and long accumulated knowledge of the Ethiopian people to handle their problems – the very problems the solutions of which the people know more than anybody. It is the hubris and “I know what you need” attitude of the TPLF officials, their conviction that knowledge comes along with authority. It is the amazing self delusion that leads Meles to think he is a professor of theoretical economics and development model builder and the failure of his followers to differentiate between a tiraz neteq street smart and a wise man. It is the prevailing thinking in TPLF officialdom that the best custodian of agricultural land is the government and not the people. It is the tragic land degradation and environmental deterioration, the cultivation of even 60 degree slopes that sane governments often legally prohibit from cultivation assign for vegetation cover. It is because of a government which does not even obey its own laws and punishes dissent and alternative thinking sometimes by shooting you on the head. It is the instigation of one ethnic group against another as a means of security of power. It is the discrepancy between the rhetoric and practice on the equality of nations and nationalities within the country. The only substantive equality I see now is that the TPLF has successfully spread hunger and famine to places that have not had it before, Oromia and the Southern regions. This was unthinkable two decades ago. Now the Oromo and the people of the southern half are equal to the people of the northern half. Yeh, now they can understand how to watch a starving child dying on their hands. If we have a government engaged in meeting the needs of its people, as the TPLF pretends it does, what rational do you see in spending billions for the invasion of poor failed Somalia that has done nothing against us and killing children and women in Mogadishu and have the bodies your soldiers dragged on the streets. What poor country that is unable to feed its children does engage in such bankrupting adventure? For what, for heaven’s sakes? You know the answer. It is not to benefit Ethiopia. They did this to secure their stranglehold on power at whatever cost, including hunger and famine. It is interesting to note that the TPLF has just increased its military budget by $50 million, most of which will definitely go to kill dissenting Ethiopians, ourselves, in the same week that it launched its large scale beggary for international aid.
Look at the misuse of public resources and money begged and borrowed in the name of the people for spending in areas that are not a priority. Tell me why the public banks are lending money for the building of expensive high rise executive buildings that are mushrooming in Addis Ababa – What was it that people in Ethiopia say of such cases? “Qit gelbo kinibnib?” Tell me why the parents of these dying children have to subsidize the gas expanses of the Al Amoudi’s of Addis Ababa. Why do we need empty buildings around the country called Universities when the number of children dying of famine is more than the number that go to college? How about some micro-dams on some small rivers for irrigation and fill the empty tummies first? At least one education expert told me that these so called universities are good and expensive empty buildings without professors and more than 90% staffed with undergraduates that, with the exception of a few, nobody in his right mind would accredit as higher learning institutions. The brightest students that graduate from the better institutions are not even working in Ethiopia anyway. About 50% of the staff teaching in my department at AAU is here in the United States. There are entire batches of medical students from AAU medical faculty working in hospitals near where I live. Do you know for the price of some of these buildings, so called Universities, and a small fraction of the aid money we receive that we can build dams on some of the river basins, harvest rainwater, and cultivate three harvests a year, and get rid of extreme hunger and famine in a short order and once and for all?
Folks if you think I am putting all the blame at the foot of the government you are wrong. Look yourselves in the mirror. Every one of us who call ourselves Ethiopians carries this shame and disgrace. You can be anything, rich, educated, well fed and living the most comfortable Ethiopian of any citizen of any rich country of Ethiopian origin. You may pretend that you have conquered odds and made it. Please know that you are a shame and a disgrace for letting this humanly solvable tragedy continue unabated in the 21st century. If it was other people, and history including some of our own past, is of full of examples of this, they would have learnt from one disaster or two, deliberate over the problem, unite as one single whole and gotten rid of such a rotten system of governance that perpetuates this shame by any means necessary. Folks, it is foolish to think that this problem will go away on its own. It won’t. The only choice we have is rising up in unity against this crime against humanity. Stop this silly politics of chewing one another, the lazy bickering and get off your duffs and do the most sensible thing. Fight. Get up and have yourselves counted. Claim your dignity as a human being. Demand your legitimate right to be freely involved in the search for the solution. Democracy is the only solution. It is not a luxury. It the only tool. How can you not get sick and tired of this disgrace, ehhhhhhhhhhh.
– – – – – – – – – –
The author can be reached at [email protected]
Brigadier General Legesse Teffera is one of the ultimate Ethiopian war heroes of the modern era. A Washington based Committee has organized an event in his honor to be held this coming July. The General shall be honored in the presence of family members and fellow Ethiopians. Gen. Legesse’s Friends, Air force veterans, alumni of The Harar Military Academy, other members of the former Ethiopian Military and other patriots shall also gather from the US and Canada to attend the event.
Gen. Legesse attended the Harar Military Academy before joining and graduating from Flight Training Squadron. As an Ethiopian hero, a professional of the highest order, and a patriot who went beyond the call of duty in the defense of Ethiopia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity during the invasion of Ethiopia by Siad Barre’s forces of Somalia during late 1970s.
Gen. Legesee, then a flying officer, went on a mission flying F-5 E fighter jet. He destroyed six of Somalia’s fighter jets in an air to air combat and on the ground. He also destroyed much of the invading army’s weaponry on the ground during that eventful and historic mission before the jet fighter he flew was shot down by enemy fire. Gen. Legesse was then captured and suffered for eleven years in solitary prison cell of Somalia. After eleven years, he was finally released and came to his beloved country as result of a prisoners of war exchange agreement made between the then government of Ethiopia and that of Somalia.
Upon his return in 1980 (Eth. Cal), Lt. Colonel Legesse was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and awarded Ethiopia’s highest order of medal for heroism (Ye Hibretesbawit Ethiopia Ye Jegna Medalia). For the past several years , Gen. Legesse has been residing in the Washington Metro area with his family.
The organizing Committee consists of Association of The Former Ethiopian Air Force, The Harar Academy Alumni Association, Concerned Ethiopians, and Artists. Other Ethiopian heroes who did much for Ethiopia including giving the ultimate sacrifice for love of country in line of duty will be remembered during this even. The event shall be held at Trinity Church located on 6000 Georgia Ave, NW, Washington DC, on Wednesday July 2, 2008 starting at 8:00 PM. The committee would like to extend its invitation to all Ethiopians to be present and honor Gen. Legesse Teffera.
To Contact the Organizing Committee: call 703-395-6067 or e-mail: [email protected]
A senior member of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit), Dr Yacob Hailemariam, has informed his colleagues that he will not present himself for the top leadership of the party after the general meeting this coming weekend.
The main reason Dr Yacob, an international legal expert who had prosecuted genocide suspects in Rwanda, is that the Meles regime in Ethiopia has left open no political space in the country for opposition parties to operate. Dr Yacob, however, will remain as member of UDJ, according to ER sources.
This coming weekend, UDJ will hold its general assembly meeting to decide how the party should move forward and to also elect new leaders. So far, five of the party’s most senior leaders, Ato Muluneh Eyoel, Dr Befikadu Degife, Prof. Mesfin Woldemariam, Dr Yacob Hailemariam, and Ato Seleshi Tena, have made their intention clear not be part of the leadership, citing the extremely hostile political climate in the country created by the U.S.-financed dictatorship of Meles Zenawi.
The decision made by Dr Yacob, Ato Muluneh and others not to play a leadership role under the circumstances demonstrates their high moral character and integrity.
The other UDJ leaders need to make the same decision, and suspend all their activities in Ethiopia. They need to also withdraw the application they submitted to the fake election board, tear it apart and put it in a trash bin as a form of protest.
Suspending their operation doesn’t mean disbanding the party. It only means that they do not accept and submit to Woyanne’s lawlessness.
This coming weekend, at the party’s general assembly, UDJ needs to demonstrate that it stands for the rule of law, and represents the interests of the people of Ethiopia by doing the right thing — do not give legitimacy to the Woyanne fascist regime. Instead, the UDJ general assembly can do the following:
1) Pass a resolution stating that the Meles dictatorship has no mandate to govern and must step down.
2) Decide that UDJ will not operate inside Ethiopia as a political party due to the gross political repression. Suspend all of the party’s operations, except informal meetings, and occasional press statements exposing Woyanne’s crimes.
3) Release all Kinijit support committees around the world from their obligation to UDJ so that the support committees will decide their own future course of action — preferably joining the Ginbot 7 Movement while maintaining their legal status as Kinijit support committees.
It must be noted here that Ginbot 7 is a political movement and it has only one mission — to remove Woyanne and install a transitional government with a 2-year term. UDJ could reclaim its name, Kinijit, and participate in that election, and the support committees would play a major role at that time. For now there is nothing they can do. Other organizations that are rallying behind or creating alliances with Ginbot 7 can do the same thing when a fair and free election is held after Woyanne is eliminated.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today, the Ethiopian Television was showing Addisu Legesse, the Minister of Agriculture and Deputy Prime Minister, saying that there are no more than 50,000 people who are facing starvation and that the problem is being purposely exaggerated to spoil the ‘good name’ his government. So who is telling the truth? Addisu or the United Nations?
UN NEWS CENTER — United Nations relief agencies and the Ethiopian Government have drastically increased their appeal for funding to help people caught up in the country’s drought and the resulting widespread crop failures as the number of Ethiopians affected by the crisis continues to soar.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today that more than $325 million is now needed to meet aid demands – nearly five times the $68 million that authorities and aid officials estimated was required just two months ago.
Emergency food supplies, water, sanitation, agricultural assistance and health-care are all priority items in the appeal, which is aimed at assisting 4.6 million people, a leap from the estimated figure of 2.2 million a few months ago.
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes warned that some 75,000 children, already suffering acute malnutrition and illness, will deteriorate further unless there the world responds “quickly and seriously” to the crisis.
“The urgency of this launch cannot be overstated,” said Mr. Holmes, who is also UN Emergency Relief Coordinator. “Humanitarian agencies are already on the ground helping the Government of Ethiopia respond to the emergency, but limited resources are hampering the efforts of both the Government and its humanitarian partners to help those in need.”
Southern and south-eastern Ethiopia are among the hardest-hit areas, with humanitarian assistance most needed in three administrative states: Oromia, Somali Region and Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region (SNNPR).
Seasonal rains have either failed completely or been extremely poor in many parts of the Horn of Africa country, hurting crop production, the availability of pastures and the raising of livestock. Rising food prices are also exacerbating the situation.
Mr. Holmes added that he was confident that Ethiopian authorities would facilitate the increased presence of UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to deal with the crisis.
