December 22,2023
Dear Friends and Supporters,
As we approach the new year, we are hopeful 2024 will bring a better time for all of us and those who depend so much on our generosity. Welcoming a new year comes with an appreciation of the passing year and all that we have been able to accomplish, as well as a recognition of the challenges we face and all that we need to do to overcome them. While deeply aware of the challenges, we, at the Fregenet Foundation, want to take this opportunity to announce, to our expanding family, that 2023 was, in fact, a year of achievements made possible against all odds. We say this believing in the strength of our conviction and the humbling experience has taught us in our nineteen years of humanitarian service.
While we are happy to brag about several triumphs, the main success story of 2023, however, has to do with the acquisition of a new plot of land from the Addis Ababa City Administration and the plan for a new school in the heart of the city. In subsequent months, the Foundation was able to acquire a construction design, courtesy of the generous support of the Blue Dot design & Engineering company, for the construction of this new state-of-the-art school. We have, subsequently, completed fencing the compound, and is now constructing a temporary building complex to house students who would be moving out of the existing rental facility, when the second semester commences.
This temporary school complex will serve for the next three to four years and save the Foundation a significant amount of rental expenses. In the meantime, the Foundation will continue its efforts to secure a construction permit and mobilize resources to build this new school, the cost of which is estimated to go as high as US $5 million. Once completed, the new school will be the second modern and fully furnished school the Foundation built after the one in Bishoftu, which commenced operation in September 2022.
We are, therefore, looking forward to welcome 2024 with this new project, as remarkable and consequential for the Foundation, as it is for our esteemed supporters, and the thousands of its current and future students. When completed, which is expected to take between two to three years, the school will transform the Foundation, by scaling up its operations, expanding its outreach, and providing high quality education to a larger number of students.
We are all excited by these coming opportunities, the promise of a bright future for the kids, and the potential for transformative changes that go beyond the school. We humbly ask you to join us in the celebration of this accomplishment, which we all deserve, and welcoming the new year with deep compassion and commitment for service and generosity.
A school for young kids is where the fight to make a world that is more free, more fair, and more just starts. Here lies the nobleness of extending a generous hand to such a worthy enterprise, which you, our supporters, and partners, have done for the last nineteen years and which, we hope, you will continue to do in the new year and the years to come.
Wishing you all Happy Holidays.
Thank you very much,
The Fregenet Foundation