Wegene Ethiopian Foundation Wegene Ethiopian Foundation History, outline & profile: Wegene is a 501(c) non-profit organization that was founded in 2000 by a group of friends who reside in the United States. The founding members are 10 friends who all felt a strong calling to help the less fortunate children in Ethiopia. This foundation is a grass root organization designed to empower or to give the tools and skills to the vulnerable communities in Ethiopia. WEF gives opportunity for the vulnerable communities to charter their future via education, training, and the provision of appropriate tools and skills to sustain children and the community constituency towards self-sufficiency, holistic and productive balanced lives. WEF is designed to sponsor and support families with children in their own home setting. It is unique in that it supports the vulnerable community via the local people who are neighbors, friends and part of the community. Children are given the tools and support to attend schools and get involved in creative and nurturing activities. Families are supported in their basic drive for survival by providing them with tools and resources to access decent homes, school, and productive work that could sustain the family. The support comes in the form of making financial, technical and material resources directly available to the vulnerable families with children via local partners. Partners across the world and specifically here in the United States are encouraged to sponsor, families and children at a cost of one cup of coffee per day. Partners will get photographs, reports and personal letters from the sponsored families. Wegene holds partners appreciation day annually. At that time all updates about the Wegene families are provided. The families yearly pictures, videos, progress report, the children?s report cards, receipts, letters, requests, including potential lists of families who are on waiting list to be sponsored are also exhibited. WEF's Philosophy: WEF's philosophy is that if hardworking destitute families are given the opportunity, tools, and resources to improve their lives, they will have a stepping stone to be able to pull themselves out of poverty and give their children better education opportunities to lead happier and healthier lives. Children who come from destitute families are deprived of the basic conditions, such as love, care, nurturing, health, nutrition and protection that every child needs to survive and thrive at a young age. Among the opportunities they are deprived of is education. The conditions under which children grow up are critical to their immediate well-being as well as to their future lives, and this is largely in the hands of the family or community into which she or he is born. That is why WEF focuses on the entire family as a unit. WEF uses a preventative approach to address these deprivations or underlying issues of poverty. WEF's program is unique in that it is designed to sponsor and support destitute families in their own home settings. By using local people as the caretakers of the families being supported by WEF, the foundation aims to restore hope in these families, prevent them from becoming victims of poverty, and enable them to become self sufficient.