It is a registered non-profit organization that provides humanitarian services to disadvantaged families, especially those who come from broken or women-headed families. This organization has been offering services for more than five years to families who seek financial support. They aspire to create families economically strong, so they don’t have to worry about their self-sustenance. They help establish a small-scale business in an organized and structured way. In addition, their mission is to help actualize the true potential of individuals through integrated development programs and training. This way, they believe they can contribute their part in eliminating poverty from society and create an environment where children can have access to their basic rights, including the right to education, food, health, and shelter.

To help this organization, you can sponsor a single mother for three years for her educational or vocational training program. During this period, the mother would learn a skill that could help run her business or land a perfect employment opportunity. This way, income would be easily generated, and they can bring a change in their lives. Furthermore, this organization offers various intervention and integrated development programs that could help the families gain access to proper healthcare facilities and education.

Family-specific intervention programs:

Family needs vary each day and as per family. Therefore, the project team employed by the organization to promote this intervention will visit each family in their home. The discussion will be to find out different aspects of their lives, overall living conditions, schooling needs, if any, health care concerns, etc. The team is expected to learn the family’s needs and further discuss with them the type of intervention that would be suitable for them to promote. For instance, if it is an illness-specific intervention, the team engaged should go ahead with the medications prescribed by the doctor.

Supporting children to go to school:

Through the intervention program, children’s educational information is collected. Based on the data from family visits, educational support is provided. The project supports female students to get access to education on priority. It also includes counseling, follow-up sessions, provision of school items and stationery, uniforms, and other accessories. Since 2016, the organization has been providing stationery to more than 100 students per year.

Providing Health education to create awareness:

A small step taken can bring about a big difference. The program was established initially to encourage people to have healthier practices by having several sessions on a regular basis to educate them about it. It helps women who are pregnant, children, the elderly, mothers with babies, and even infants because health risks are present at all stages of life. Thus through this program, they consult interested women and provide follow-up activities like home visits and weekly women’s meetings (PBM) and motivation and education and conducted by means of media such as brochures, pamphlets, and literature. Furthermore, they also offer an integrated HIV and AIDS control program to create awareness about HIV and AIDS. They strive to reduce risk through information and education, community mobilization and peer support groups, voluntary counseling, and testing center services.

Education and counseling on essential nutrition:

The Nutrition Counseling Service is a program implemented to educate families on common diet problems and counsel them on essential nutrition action. In keeping with the service’s mission, which is to increase children’s nutritional knowledge, the program seeks to educate the parents of overweight children about common health problems that can affect healthy growth and development. The community nutrition program will help the families to maintain the essential nutrition in their daily life.

Abune Zena Markos is a non-profit association that was established to help homeless children who were begging on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since they do not have anyone to take care of them, or they come from broken or women-headed families, this association helps these children by providing them with housing, education, and vocational training. This way they become self-sufficient and lead stable, and happy lives. Through education, they assist these children to reintegrate into society and become economically active contributors to their communities.

Not only this, the Abune Zena Markos children and elderly support association help to care for and support vulnerable adolescents, families, and the elderly through our programs of financial support, psycho-social support, education, and vocational training and development programs, along with crisis intervention.

Its mission is to help poor children, women, and the elderly in Ethiopia. They seek to provide education, medical care, food, clothing, and housing to people of all ages who find themselves alone in their old age or struggling with poverty. As mentioned earlier, this organization aims to promote self-sustainability for the poorest sectors of the population by providing financial resources for these people to establish small businesses. Through operating microeconomic models with small business principles, residents are able to eventually support themselves.

Over the period of time, Wzo Gebeyanes, the founder of this organization, has managed to support and help hundreds of mothers to become financially independent and self-sufficient to support their families. Throughout these years, Abune Zena Markos’s proved to provide:

Despite many challenges, this association has been successful in helping out thousands of homeless children and mothers to become self-reliant. With continuous efforts and generous support of the people, Adune Zena Markos has helped many families avert deaths and suicides. In addition, they closely monitor and assess the health of mothers and children to bring a positive change in the society.