Trip to Ethiopia to Work With KDP

1. In May I will travel to Ethiopia to work with the Kossoye Development Project, an organization dedicated to providing health, lifelong learning, and food security to the people of Northern Ethiopia. The organization has impacted the lives of thousands of men women and children by teaching enhanced gardening techniques, which are more sustainable and create crop diversity in a historically food instable region on the country. The garden distribution plan has helped to create an incredible number of gardens in a relatively short time and has benefited thousands of people. During my trip I will first assist in refresher workshops in Dabat, Dara, and Shenkor Mesk for people to participated in KDP workshops last summer. I will then walk the villages that KDP has worked in and use GPS technology to track village size, population, number of families, family size, number of gardens, distance to roads, distance to latrines, and distance to water suppplies. This information will be matched with material that has been collected over 10 rounds of KDP data collection and health surveys. The GPS data will help KDP track progress and provide much needed services to potentially tens of thousands of people in the area of the next few years. 

Because KDP is a volunteer organisation, i will need to raise money on my own in order to cover my travel and living expenses. Any leftover money i raise from this project will go straight to KDP's future activities.

Thank you,

Michael Austin

www.kossoyeproject.org