Imagine Ethiopia 2011: You Can “Go” From Home

As one of the leaders of Imagine Ethiopia 2011 I wanted to share a progress update to inspire and potentially involve you in our next steps. Read on for more.

Earlier this year, Vancouver-based charitable organization, imagine1day, launched their second annual Imagine Ethiopia trip: a two-week adventure that takes participants on a daily exploration of the best that Ethiopia has to offer.

imagine1day is a growing global community of people making passionate contributions to ensure that all Ethiopians have access to quality education funded free of foreign aid by 2030. They ran their first trip to Ethiopia last year to great success.

This year’s trip is fast approaching. The Imagine Ethiopia team is set to arrive in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital) on October 23 and they are busy. Not busy packing bags – busy with Creatribution. In the lead up to the trip, this year’s participants have chosen to take on raising $100 000 (the funds required to finance a three-year, self-generating education project with imagine1day) before they depart. You can support them here and US donors can support them through GO Campaign, our stateside partner, here.

What is Creatribution? Rather than bore you with an explanation of the concept, here is a glimpse at some of Imagine Ethiopia 2011’s participants and what they are doing to ensure that $100K is in the suitcase bound for Addis this October:

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Three Ways to Do Something About Famine in Africa (From Forbes.com)

A guest blog by Majka Burhardt on Frederik Allen's Leadership blog on Forbes.com.

...There is enormous opportunity here to rewrite the long, sad story of famine and turn it into something much more promising and much more accurate for the Ethiopia of today as it becomes the Ethiopia of tomorrow—using Ethiopia’s own resources. Ethiopia is not Somalia, but all of the countries in the Horn of Africa are being lumped together in the current headlines in a devastating manner, in part by association and in part because the very real drought does cut across national lines. The Horn is a region of more or less than a million square miles with between 100 million and 200 million people, depending on how you define it. The region’s entire story is much more complex and ultimately hopeful than just the famine. Focusing on only the famine is like saying that all of Europe is financially and morally bankrupt just because of the recent doomsday chatter about Italy....

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Coffee Story: Ethiopia Available Now, Needed Now

Signed Copies Available Above*

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It's a big day for me today. It's the day Coffee Story Ethiopia comes out, and moreover it is the day I get to thank everyone who has helped support and create this amazing project. We've done it.

This morning a friend asked me to write her a note about why I wrote this book-- where did this passion come from? she asked. This is what I told her: I was drawn to write about coffee because I saw the impact of writing about adventure and climbing in Ethiopia-- and moreover I saw people's responses to a thicker and more complicated way to understand Ethiopia. Climbing was something me and my team brought to Ethiopia in 2007 (ie the technical systems, difficulty, etc); coffee is something that is Ethiopia.

I believe all of us want to understanding things more and feel more connected vis a vis an understanding that is not intellectual but is rather guttural-- we want to care. I saw these connections with writing and speaking about the adventure in Ethiopia and saw interest even further piqued when I would talk about coffee. And then I got it: One tenth more understanding about Ethiopia coffee could change the economic reality for a country that is trying its damnedest to no longer be one of the poorest in the world. How could I not create conversation to further that?

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The Biggest Job I've Ever Had

A boy in the Ethiopian Flag in Northern Ethiopia, Photo By Travis Horn Five years ago a taxi driver in Addis Ababa told me that the book I was about to write chronicling climbing in Ethiopia would save Ethiopia. I’d just explained to him what rock climbing was the minute before. Nevertheless he was convinced and I nodded and smiled as if I were as well.

When that taxi driver told me my book would save Ethiopia I took his statement at face value: write book =  save Ethiopia. Who knows what he really meant. I’ve never seen him since and don’t know his name. What I do know is that Vertical Ethiopia came out a year later and I spent that year and the two years following learning that I was indeed trying to save Ethiopia. But not just Ethiopia -- Ethiopia, myself, the United States, and the world....  

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The Ballad You Forgot, An Additive Adventure Entry

A young student showing off his artistic side with the rest of his class at one of imagine1day's schools

A blog in conjunction with Osprey Packs and Outside Television.

Let’s get this out of the way. I was 8. I made bad choices like singing Don’t Fence Me In at my father’s second wedding and lying down on the carpet in the school loft; I had bad choices foisted upon me, like a two-inch buzz cut—billed as a smart fashion move with the added benefit of being easier to treat lice (the loft). No wonder I felt sorry for the people in Ethiopia.

My older sister terrorized me, I had a boy hair cut, and glasses. They were starving, being relocated 400 miles away from their families and heritage, and in the middle of one of the most militaristic regimes in modern Africa called The Red Terror. I did what any person feeling a great sense of connected persecution would do. I wrote a ballad.

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