Blue Nile Children's Organization
(BNCO)

Building a future....one child at a time.

We are proudly in our third year of funding projects involving ten teens from seven different Seattle-area schools, all working together in partnership with BNCO to improve the lives of orphans in the city of Kolfe in Addis Ababa. In 2011-2012, the teens embarked on a “Chicks for Chickens” program, and brought a chicken coop to the community in Kolfe. In 2012-2013, they expanded their involvement in this same community by leading the effort to install an outdoor shower. This year, they are using their Mother House Fund seed grant to hire a Weyit one day each week for a year to deliver people from surrounding villages to the local health clinic. We invite you to watch their video to learn more about their good work:

The mission of last year's project: “Hygiene for Health”, was to improve the health and hygiene of the BNCO orphans by building a small shower complex on the grounds of the medical clinic. The showers were needed because, at that time, there was so little water available to the orphans and their foster families that they could only sponge bathe once every couple of weeks. The goal of this project was to prevent the spread of the most common infectious diseases, caused by bacteria, viruses, amoebas, parasites and worms, among the orphans.

Our original grant in 2011 supporting this amazing group of girls known to us as the "Chicks for Chickens," was to kick-start a student-led project involving ten teens from seven different Seattle-area schools, all working together to provide chickens to families in the city of Kolfe in Addis Ababa. The “Chicks” of Chicks for Chickens are a group of girls who began a relationship with their non-profit sponsor, the Blue Nile Children’s Organization (BNCO), in 2010 when their soccer team was inspired to sponsor a thirteen year old girl from Ethiopia named Genani.

Funds from the Mother House Seed grant were used to jumpstart the project by paying for the initial 180 chickens, coops, fencing, feed, hay, clean water, and some miscellaneous tools.

The girls ultimately hope the students in the city of Kolfe in Addis Ababa will be able to perform better in school by being well nourished. To achieve this goal; the Chicks for Chickens project will provide the much needed protein from the chicken eggs to sustain, nurture and improve the lives of the children and their community. In addition; they hope to accomplish community development between the foster families and orphans due to the collaboration in taking care of the chickens, cleaning coops, watering, feeding, collecting and sharing the eggs.

This is an amazing group of teens who are committed to improving the situation in the community of Kolfe. Their applications have stood out, year-after-year, as exemplary illustrations of youth building local and global community through acts of compassion.

Go to the Blue Nile Children’s Organization website to learn more and get involved, or follow BNCO on Facebook.