Welcome to dehana-amdework

Dehana with its beautiful landscape

short term projects: To kick start the process, in the short term, the Foundation has prioritized three projects. One is constructing a guest house , which will serve both for the community and visitors, tourists, development workers etc. At this moment, there are no such accommodation facilities, which limits the number of visitors to the area and affects directly development initiatives.
The second project is public sanitation infrastructure. This is a serious problem in the area, which has enormous negative health implications. The public sanitation infrastructures will be used as a model for the rest of the district.
The third one is building a kindergarten , since at this moment children until they join primary school, have no opportunity to start schooling.

long term projects: We believe to start small and up scale the program step by step. The long term plan includes tourism , support to agriculture - linking small farmers to the market and focusing on productivity and employment creation; support the education sector via e-learning by linking all schools with knowledge centres nationally and globally; support water , sanitation and hygiene throughout the district; explore possibilities for promotion of renewable energy etc.

Guest House Services/Lodge:

Dehana woreda is extraordinarily physically isolated inhabited by rural farmers. The capital, Amdework is only connected to Sekota, the zone capital by gravel road that often is difficult to use during the rainy season. The town is extremely underdeveloped and no guest house service is available to date. Therefore, DAF is planning to build a Guest House, which will be useful for hosting national and international visitors. We believe providing acceptable shelter is a basic step to attract visitors; friends of Amdework to the woreda. In order to facilitate tourism, DAF is collaborating with a Belgian non-profit organization known as: Local Solutions Development Group(LSDG) to build a guest house, which will be the first in the woreda. By doing so, DAF involves itself in a social business, to generate its own income.
Preliminary design report of the guest house answers the necessity of welcoming visitors in Dehana-Amdework. The current accessibility to the town is limited to one sinuous track linking through mountain landscape to Sekota, difficult to drive in one day return. Current requirement is to provide overnight stay for officials, NGO's and temporary accommodation for teachers, specialists or visiting families. The team of LSDG has also identified the potential benefit for family reunions, celebrations, weddings as well as a potential for eco-tourism.

Kindergarten:

To guarantee success and bring long lasting results, it is apparent that we must start investing in our children. DAF, therefore, is building the first Kindergarten in the woreda. We believe this approach will bring a continuity of today's self reliance initiative for future generation and the beginning creating well cared environment for future talents.
The site already chosen has a newly constructed two classrooms type of structure made of a corrugated iron roofing laid on an eucalyptus stick frame structure , with the walls filled with mud and straw.
During the visit of the site, it appeared that the location for the school was correct and the size and layout of the newly built classroom of an acceptable standard. The architects commented however that the construction system and the structure were of ephemeral nature and that with the help of technical advice, a more appropriate structure for the walls and roof frame could be developed.
It has then been suggested that a new two classroom unit could be built next to the existing one, using "ameliorated" appropriate technologies to be proposed by the visiting team. Once constructed the new classrooms can replace the old ones which in turn would then be re-constructed according to the lessons learned from the "ameliorated" typology.

Tourism:

Dehana-Amdework is geographically located further away form roads and major towns/cities. The community has no contact to the outside World. The majority of the population has no access to any technology. It had not seen cars or bikes let alone the latest technologies.
Therefore, it is apparent, the development of tourism is essential to close the gap between the Dehana-Amdework communities to the rest of the World. Not to mention, the world will have access to the beautiful landscapes, genuine culture, and historical places.

Honey Production:

Traditionally, Dehana-Amdework has been a home of tasty and organic honey. Honey is widely used for making Tej(Ethiopia's oldest locally fermented honey wine). This product, however, has not been fully exploited for better production and marketability. Therefore, with the collaboration of friendly organizations and experts, DAF will work on improving the production in the woreda.
We believe, through modern honey producing methods, infrastructures, and marketing strategies, the community will increase its income generating capacities.

Livestock management:

Dehana-Amdework region has always been known for its enormity of cattle population. DAF will work to improve the livestock management in the woreda and develop a marketing strategy to assist local farmers sale their cattle in the national and international market.
DAF will continue to expand and develop knowledge base approaches to add new products like oil seed that will reflect the resources of the woreda. In the public services arena, DAF will explore e-learning, vocational skills development and water and sanitation.
We believe, by simply introducing a modern system to improve livestock ranches, the woreda will be able to market out, large number of ox, cows, sheep, goats and other domestic animals for local and regional use and explore possibilities for promotion of renewable energy.
DAF's ambition is, once we have successfully piloted this development approach, we would like to use the model to support, initiate, inspire similar initiative throughout Ethiopia and beyond.
It is an ambition we take seriously!