April 10, 2024
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Calendar year 2024 has seen one of the most encouraging signs of accomplishments in the Foundation’s schedule of activities. The last few months have shown us how a successful institution builds from the grassroots level. This, we believe, is the basis for a sustainable and impactful intervention of an empowered community, and the resulting meaningful transformation of lives.
Following our fruitful, albeit years-long, discussions with Addis Ababa city authorities, we were, finally, granted a plot of land for the expansion of our school. The Foundation, with the participation of all stake holders and contributions from local members, leaders, and partners, was ready to engage in the construction of a temporary structure, inside the newly acquired land, to house students from the old Fregenet Kidan Lehetsanat School rental facility.
Around the beginning of October 2023, we approached engineer Yosef Atle to manage and lead the construction of this temporary school building on a pro bono basis. He accepted the proposal with the understanding that the foundation will buy the materials and pay for labor. Engineer Yosef modified the original plan, changed the construction materials as appropriate, fundraised cash, and in-kind donations threefold, above our original budget to cover the added cost, worked from dusk to dawn and completed the construction. This accomplishment was beyond our expectation in both quality of work and time allotted for the project. This is, indeed, taking the foundations vision to a higher level.
With the leading role of Engineer Yosef, his friend Abiy (the architect) and of course Ato Girma Seifu Maru, the resource mobilizer, Serwe Girma and his SIMBA cleaning services company crew, Engineer Tsedeke Yihune and his Flintstone Engineering staff, Hailemariam Moges, the vice chair of the local board, have proved to be irreplaceable and staunch supporters of Fregenet Foundation. They have become active partners of our dreams and visions of the future. Our sincere appreciation and gratitude go to them. We are proud and honored to have such friends who show such high-level commitment to the cause and are able to deliver.
The construction of this temporary housing took only five months, and our students were able to move in February 2024, around the beginning of the second school semester, as planned. Even though the building is a temporary housing, it will be their home for the next five years and beyond, while the permanent structure is under construction. This gives students and teachers space to continue the teaching-learning process without interruption.
What remains now is, within in a month or two, to handover the old rental facility back to the owners and reallocate the rental payment line-item budget to other, more essential expenditures. At this point in time, the foundation and the local board would like to take this opportunity to express their immense gratitude to Ato Fekade Abebe and his family, the owners of the rental facility, which served our students and the community for more than eighteen years. Ato Fekade was kind enough to accommodate the renewal of the lease, with reasonable rental increments, which allowed us to continue using the facility without any interruption. With this huge contribution, Ato Fekade has his own fingerprints in the school’s history and progress. We will always be grateful for that.
In the meantime, we have begun exploring fund raising opportunities in earnest to collect the finances needed to build this permanent school facility which is slated to be a state-of-the-art school facility in one of the most underserviced parts of the city. The Foundation is using this opportunity to reach out to its partners and supporters to continue their assistance in any way they can and help us achieve this important and undoubtedly life-transforming project.
We sincerely thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
The Fregenet Foundation