Empowerment Through Education Foundation -ETE Foundation
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- Empowerment Through Education Foundation -ETE Foundation
A 501(C)3 non-profit organization based in Boulder, CO dedicated to educating the girl refugees of South Sudan.
Address
PO Box 57
Boulder, CO
80306
General information
The ETE Foundation has been working with local leaders, architects and engineers to plan and construct a school facility in the village of Isalaro, South Sudan. Currently, we have enrolled 270 children from the local villages. None of these children have had any previous education. The age range of the students is from 4 - 16. Schooling is free and takes place in a temporary location, with 7 teachers hired to instruct the children in English (the official language of South Sudan), writing, and mathematics. All students receive one meal each day they attend the school. Our organization was founded in 2005 as The Community of Sudanese and American Women. In 2011, after the creation of the new nation of South Sudan, our name changed to The Community of South Sudanese and American Women. The original mission was to help young women who emigrated to Boulder acculturate to American society and to provide them with assistance in finding jobs, housing and educational opportunities. From 2006 through 2012, we helped educate the 18 women that had come to Boulder. Six received bachelor's degrees from the University of Colorado and seven received associate degrees from Front Range Community College. We also provided funds and tutors for seven of the women to get certified as Nursing Assistants. All have become naturalized citizens, and one of the graduates from CU worked as a White House intern for the First Lady, Michelle Obama. Our intention was always to help each woman become financially independent, which was accomplished by the end of 2012. In 2013, we changed our mission to our current one, educating children in South Sudan, and in 2016 changed our name to reflect our new mission.
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Category
“Lost Girls”
Our organization was created to help the “lost girls” of Sudan, who came to the U.S. via a refugee program under the George W. Bush administration in 2006. 18 of the girls made their way to Boulder and our organization, which was called back then, Community of Sudanese and American Women, help the girls acculturate to life in America. CSAW found them good housing and jobs, aided them in getting either their high school diplomas or GED’s and to go to college or vocational school. Of the 18, 5 of these young women graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado and 7 earned an Associate degree from Front Range Community College. All of them have become naturalized citizens, and have been supporting themselves and their families independently since 2012.
When South Sudan became the newest country in the world, the refugee program terminated and no other girls were able to come to the U.S. So our organization changed its mission to educating girls in South Sudan. Our founding members, Micklina and Omunu, who are South Sudanese, traveled there to find a suitable location for us to build a school. We settled on an area in southern part of the country and worked with a Boulder architectural firm to create a plan for the campus. Unfortunately, a civil war began in South Sudan just as we were beginning to hire local companies to prepare the plot of land and build the school. During that time, our board decided to change our name to reflect our new mission and we adopted the current name: Empowerment Through Education Foundation (ETE Foundation)
At the same time we were working on the school plans in Boulder, Micklina and another board member, Lawrence, traveled there to meet with the local officials and register our organization as an official NGO. When they arrived they were met by a large group of children and their parents, who asked if the school could start right away. So Micklina and Lawrence found several local adults with teaching experience and we started an informal school “under the tree”. Unfortunately, the civil war spilled into this area of South Sudan and the families fled to Uganda, which was only 30 miles away. The Ugandan government has been incredibly welcoming to the almost 2 million refugees and has set up many camps in conjunction with the UN.
So, given this new reality, we shelved our plans for the school for the time being and began to formulate a way that we could continue our education program. Micklina and Lawrence have traveled twice to Uganda, meeting with the elders of the camps and the families who wanted their girls to be educated. Knowing that we had limited funds that we could use to start this program, our board decided that we could send 50 girls to school for the 2018 school year. Micklina and Lawrence, in conjunction with the local families, created a set of criteria by which we could decide who the best candidates were to send to school. It was a very difficult process, as you can imagine, there were so many more girls that also wanted to go, but our funding was limited.
