New website

The new website is finally up and running! It has take a long time but I finally made the switch and transferred the new Wordpress site over to For-ethiopia.

Using a fantastic theme by TheMolitor we managed to get some of the old content across and have drafted some new pages. More importantly the Facebook and Twitter feeds link nicely and photos can be drawn in from our Flickr account.

The old site can still be found at www.old.for-ethiopia.com although old links on other sites no longer work but hopefully the new site will quickly update.

We have a couple of events coming up in the next few months, details of which can be found on the website.

Have you heard the word???? Macka B live at the Trinity Centre on Friday 25th February 2011

An Ethiopian fundraiser sound system and live band special organised by Back 2 its Roots!

Tickets cost £13 available from Bristol Ticket Shop, Cooshti & Genesis Records or online at www.bristolticketshop.co.uk


100% of the profits go to Plan Lalibela and For-ethiopia.


More info at www.back2itsroots.org

Solarsense to team up with For-ethiopia

We are pleased to announce that Solarsense will be raising money for us and plan to go out to Ethiopia to install some solar panels on the health clinics in Addis Alem.

Solarsense have carried our a number of projects overseas for charities and we hope that this could be the start of a long-term relationship.

Staff of Solarsense will be running the Bristol Half Marathon in September to raise money for their trip.

They will also be at Glastonbury this year and have a stand displaying their energy products. They will also be allowing festival goers to charge their mobiles with the pedicab, which is fitted with a solar panel for a donation to For-ethiopia.

Solarsense are installing one of the largest solar installation in the UK at Worthy farm and you can follow their blog here.

A Taste for Ethiopia is back

A Taste for Ethiopia on October 17th 2009 is your chance to experience real Ethiopian food and culture in Bristol.

Tickets cost £15 to book please email: event@for-ethiopia.com

The venue is Woodlands, Belgrave Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 2AB.

Help needed

We really want to get a new website up and running and would like to go for a content management system to enable all the trustees to be able to post to the site and reduce the reliance on a webmaster.

Ideally we want to use a free system such as Joomla! but have no experience in what to use and how to go about setting it up. We would need to port across much of the content from our existing site although once up and running we should be able to manage this ourselves.

So, we are after help! If anyone is into CMS and would be willing to do some work for us free of charge, please get in touch either via our website or add a comment to the blog.

Art Exhibition

Jacqueline Conradie-Faul, Carrie Hill and Claire Loder will be presenting a show in which they celebrate the 3 different art forms of painting, sculpture and printmaking.

The exhibition is open from Saturday 14 - Friday 20 June, 11am - 5pm at Widcombe Studios Art Gallery in Bath. You can print an invite here.

Jacqueline Conradie-Faul has helped For-Ethiopia , advising on and creating a range of art-related projects. 3 will be another opportunity for Jacqueline to contribute to the amazing work that For-Ethiopia is involved with. 20% of all Jacqueline’s sales will be donated to For-Ethiopia.

Another late update.

A lot has happened since the last post.

For Ethiopia Association in Addis Ababa have reported their end of year and are waiting for the auditors to finish. At the same time they are submitting next year's (06/07) proposal which will include work from the donations of Bristol Grammar School, St Joseph's RC Primary School, Bradgate Surgery, John Humphrys' Kitchen Table Charitable Trust (excuse the punctuation John!) among others. Projects will include two more springs, two new wells, furniture, books and equipment for various schools and clinics in the Addis Alem region.

In Bristol, we have been preparing the accounts for an audit ready for the next AGM (date to be announced).

John has been over to Ethiopia (on a sort of working holiday) and got to see the finished springs as well as the new locations.

Our friend Sean held a preview of his new cafe called Kuvuka which opens on Saturday the 13th December. The cafe will promote issues in Africa and will sell fairtrade coffee. Pop down to see it on Stokes Croft near the centre of Bristol.

Tigist has been involved in campaigning with Oxfam against the unfair deals Starbucks give to the Ethiopian farmers and has got herself on various sites.

Lots more happening, but I will write more when we have a date announced for the AGM...