Today is an easy going day for the group.  We head back to Addis Ababa from Ambo to have several meetings at the Hilton in the afternoon.  So this will be a short report today as we prepare for our trip home.

One of our meetings today was with the staff of a group that W2T has interacted with in Addis over the last several years called REAL Africa.  Their mission focuses on assisting disadvantaged young girls grades 7 thru 12.  They organize the girls into clusters of 15 girls, all located in the same community, but not necessarily at the same school.  The girls often are living with relatives with no immediate support.  Each cluster has a mentor that works with the girls, especially tutoring.  The object is to keep the girls in school so that they graduate from high school and attend college.  REAL currently has 9 clusters active in different areas in Ethiopia.  More than 170 girls have been served by the program and several have already entered college.  We meet with their staff to get an update on their progress, as well as present them with the second batch of dresses and shorts that have been prepared by Faith Lutheran Church in Austin, TX.  REAL will work with each of the mentors to identify families that can best use the dresses.  They were excited to be able to share these gifts with the girls and their families.

This evening the W2T team treated the Addis staff to a thank you dinner at the Top View restaurant.  Each and every one of the Glimmer staff members has contributed to the support of W2T projects in Ethiopia in some major way. Their caring attitudes make our trips to Ethiopia very special and insure we get the chance to connect directly to the communities we are serving. Their professional and competent management of our projects insure that our donor resources are used wisely and efficiently.  We could not ask for a better, more responsive partner and for that we are very grateful.

We head for Texas tomorrow, so it will be a couple of days until we have another post.  Over the coming week or so, the W2T team will share some of our personal reflections on what the trip has meant for each of us.

Dick Moeller