The Children of Oromia: The Front Line in Defending Human Rights
Guest Speaker: Faiza Hargaaya
Faiza will share her experiences as a volunteer at an orphanage centre that doubled as an elementary school in the region of Oromia in East Africa.
Thursday – May 14th - 7:00 pm Orientation to Amnesty International for newcomers at 6:30 pm Welcome Place - 397 Carlton Cost: Free Open to the Public - Everyone Welcome!
OROMO YOUTH CULTURAL SHOW A fundraising event for the Khulafa Al-Rashidin Orphanage
Saturday April 25 Starts at 4:00 p.m. Bulman Centre, The University of Winnipeg
Tickets: $10 Adults / $5 Children All proceeds go to the Khulafa Al-Rashidin Orphanage, Oromia, East Africa. Tickets can be purchased at 997-8400 or at the UWpg Info Booth.
Cultural dances & food, fashion show, poetry, drama, media presentation. Lots of door prizes!!
Khulafa Al-Rashidin Orphanage, Oromia, East Africa (part of the Ethiopian Empire) is a centre that doubles as an elementary school. It provides free education, school uniforms, and school supplies to those who cannot afford the cost. It promotes literacy and encourages education for the most desititute and vulnerable children of the community. It is now struggling, for lack of funding. A UWpg International Development student, spent her practicum placement here. She and the Winnipeg Oromo Youth Assoc. are now trying to raise $1400 for the orphanage.
For more information on the orphanage, go to the website of KAROAD
Tokkumaa - the Oromo Youth Association at the University of Winnipeg, Canada, will hold an Oromo Youth Cultural Show at the Bulman Centre, University of Winnipeg, on April 25th, 2009.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children. All money raised will go towards the renovations of KAROAD (an orphanage in eastern Oromia).
The Winnipeg Oromo Youth Association of Canada has adopted a library that will be the first public library in Melka Jebdu, a town just outside of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. As part of “Adopt-A-Library” project by CODE (the Canadian Organization for Development through Education), an organization working with local organizations throughout the developing world to empower children to learn, an online pledge drive is now open to raise money towards the development of this library.
There are several schools in Melka Jebdu, a community in the Harare region of eastern Ethiopia. CODE has pledged to support the community to develop its first library. When you adopt this library, you help us support this community to refurbish a building donated by them, provide library furniture, supply books in Oromiffa, the local language, and English, provide professional support for teachers using the library, and help train local people in library management skills.
Look at the seventeen students arrested in [my home town]. Is it because they were questioning education policy or that producing productive Oromos would take us backward? I fear no educated Oromo will be able to lead Oromia. We are ready to be jailed, even killed rather than accept this. It is immoral. -Student who was arrested in 2002, July 25, 2002.
Students have been among the most vocal critics of government policies, and they have paid a heavy price for their dissent. On numerous occasions, students have taken to the streets to express their discontent with a range of political issues including changes in education policy, denial of academic freedom, and the negative impact of economic policies. High school and university students are among the most educated people in Ethiopia. High school students in particular are sensitive to the hardship government policies may cause as many come from rural areas where their families live in abject poverty. As a European diplomat said, "it is perfectly logical . . . . Students are always more idealistic and active!"39 Yet the government appears to feel threatened by their protests and repeatedly overreacts in suppressing demonstrations,...
PRESS RELEASE Targeting of Oromo students and youth does not serve any purpose aside from intensifying ethnic tensions in Ethiopia! • IOYA Press Release Novemeber 10, 2006
We have learned and are strongly alarmed by the cold blooded murder of a young Oromo student Shibiru Demissie at Mekele University. Shibiru was strangled to death on the evening of Saturday, November 4, 2006 at Mekele University where he had traveled hundreds of kilometers to receive education. According to the Oromo Student Union at Mekele University, Shibiru Demissie a third year history student was dragged out of his room after the campus electric power was disconnected. We have no doubt that this is another deliberate action taken by security forces as it has been done to numerous Oromo students at Mekele University and else where in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government has been killing and imprisoning hundreds of innocent Oromo students since it came to power. The past five years has especially been a nightmare for Oromo students who were made major targets of political assassinations and mysterious disappearances. Thousands of them were taken from their school and are serving long-term jail sentences without trial. Young under age female students were raped and...
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