Hold My Hand is a non-profit organization that aims to help the abandoned children of Ethiopia by providing care, education and financial support. Hold My Hand strives to change the lives and future of children who made the streets of Ethiopia their home. Street children in Ethiopia are constantly being neglected and discriminated by their way of life. The causes and reasons for children making th
e street a home varies. Not only does Hold My Hand hope to help them, but we also wish to inform others and create awareness as to why this is a recurring problem in Ethiopia. Not all cases are the same, and children in Ethiopia become street children for a number of reasons. Parents often send their children to the street to make money to provide the family with food. Typically these children are still likely to have a family, and a home to return to at night, and are not actually sleeping on the street. Sometimes these children go to school as well. Families in Ethiopia have the tendency to be large. With little assistance from the government or the state, it is almost impossible for the families to survive. It is easy to resent parents in Ethiopia for sending their children to the street to beg, but in some cases it is crucial to understand that this may be one of the only options for a family. Unfortunately, not all children begging on the street have a family. In many cases the families of these street children felt their only option was to leave them to fend for themselves, or to sell them into child labor. However, there are children living on the street who do have families and relatives but choose to stay on the streets to stay away from the difficulties they suffer at home. Depending on the situation, the children might visit their families as well, but are either not welcome, or leave their home once again because of conflict. No matter how they began their life on the streets of this country, their way of life there is not only difficult, but it is a struggle for them to survive everyday. While the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) has reported decreases in poverty and hunger, while increasing the health of people in Ethiopia (within the last decade), the UNDP recognizes the lack of investment made by the country to take action for vulnerable children, particularly children living with disabilities and street children. While there is still a lot of work to be done in bettering the lives of abandoned children, the UNDP has also reported that in the last 4 years, almost 5 million children were provided with community based alternatives that provided care services for them rather than living on the streets (Committee on the Rights of the Child examines the report of Ethiopia). Hold My Hand is attempting to contribute to this progress, while making a difference in the community of Addis Ababa. We want no child to call the street their home whatever the cause may be. Hold My Hand is and will continue to impact the lives of children in Ethiopia.
