Good News for the Kickoff of the Capital Campaign

December 10, 2010

Dear Friends and Supporters,

The board and staff of The Fregenet Foundation and its school, Fregenet Kidan Lehitsanat, are excited to announce that the capital campaign to purchase the rented facility of the school in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia has officially launched.

Many of you are aware of the dire situation that the needy children and the community we serve will face when the school lease contract expires. We have invested a lot in that community for over six years and the children and their parents expect us to stay there and expand our services. We do not intend to abandon this community by looking for another rental facility far from the neighborhood that we serve now and jeopardize the continuation of services. We plan to stay right where we are and affirm our permanency.

For this to happen, we have been working very hard to put together a committee to tackle this campaign and lay out a workable structure for the task at hand. We are happy to announce that a committee has been formed and is ready to move forward. These committed professionals of different backgrounds and varied expertise are excited to work together as one irrespective of the East and West boundaries or geographic proximities.

To top this off, and we consider this the amazing part, a number of organizations and individuals who believe in our cause and trust our commitment have already donated money to jumpstart this capital campaign! Although these contributions have been secured for quite some time, we have been holding the news back until we were ready to kick off the campaign.

At this time here is some information we\’d like you to have as you consider how you can help.

  1. Our school property price for now is three million birr, which is about $200,000 in dollar terms, including tax.

2. We have secured $38,000 towards this effort so far. The donors are:

  • United Artists for Africa $25,000
  • Two wonderful couples and owners of Sity Communications $7,000
  • Fregenet\’s family $6,000
  • Pledges from various sources

Our deepest appreciation to these contributors.

We also would like to take this opportunity to share with you the exciting news that Global Fund for Children has granted $6000 to Fregenet Kidan Lehitsanat School for general operating expenses. This is also very encouraging and a well-timed recognition of our efforts.

All of this means we still have to raise at least $150,000 to reach our goal and purchase the school facility. We can think of this in different ways. If we get $1000 from 150 donors or $500 from 300 donors we can meet our objective.

With your support, we believe this goal is achievable!

Together, we can make a difference!

The Fregenet Foundation

Please write your checks payable to:

The Fregenet Foundation

901 South Flower Street, Unit 411

Los Angeles, CA 90015

Tel 213-327-2063