Blind and Deaf Program Wogdie, Ethiopia

Since 2009, PfefferminzGreen has offered financial support to our local partner NGO to help fund a Blind and Deaf Program in the remote town of Wogdie. The program was developed by a group of local teachers in order to create opportunities and an independent future for people with disabilities. Located at a school, it is the only integrative program for people with disabilities in the entire region. More than 50 children and young people with disabilities now have the opportunity to attend school, and a number of the students with visual impairments are able to attend classes with their sighted peers. Some of them have gone on to become the best pupils in their class.

In Ethiopia, there are almost no care facilities for people with disabilities outside the capital of Addis Ababa. We are therefore incredibly happy to see the integration, in the rural areas around the town of Wogdie in northern Ethiopia, of a group of people who until now have been socially deprived. A mixed, non-discriminatory learning environment and the students’ increased chances of better living conditions should be considered as basic needs throughout Ethiopia and across the rest of the African continent.

PfefferminzGreen finances the salaries of the local teachers, who are well versed in sign language and reading Braille. The teachers also assist students with disabilities with the use of white canes, both in order to assist them with coping with the challenges they face in daily life and also to help them eventually become self-independent and able to create their own incomes.