Service to Others
Where We Started
When we first arrived in the village, individuals were starving and utilizing all their efforts to feed themselves and then their families. These circumstances made it nearly impossible for villagers to think about providing service to another.
People would fight for positions in line to get even the smallest amount of benefit for themselves in place of their neighbor.
What
We Have Done
Programs within the Village of Hope
provide service to those in need. While these provide immense benefit to the
individuals and village, one of the guiding principles of the Village of Hope is
“We work to help the village become independent, not dependent on us.”
In order to achieve this goal, we have developed programs where service to others in the community is a key element. The Youth Service Program and Dagoo Harawaa Program are active in providing service and support to needy individuals and the community as a whole. Fathers and youth are harvesting fields for widows, clearing roads, improving the appearance of the public schools and repairing homes of the elderly.
The Youth Service and Dagoo Harawaa program are based on the Ethiopian concept of “dagoo”. Dagoo is an old Ethiopian word that was used to call people together to help one another. This included jobs such as plowing, planting, sowing, repairing and building. Generations ago when dagoo was called, those who were invited were obligated to come and provide the manpower needed to complete the job and would only expect to receive a daily meal in return. More recently in the village culture dagoo and the unity and service it provided in the community has fallen away and become lost.
The goal of the Village of Hope is to rekindle the spirit of dagoo in such a way that that it spreads from the local village to the woreda, regional, tribal and then national level.
In 2007, there was a death of one of the fathers participating in the Dagoo Harawaa program. This would mean that his family would lose all of the benefits of that program. The other fathers participating in the program met together and decided they would each come to work one-half hour early and donate that extra work and salary to the widow so that her family and children could receive all the benefits without her having to work.
While this single act of kindness by these fathers may not seem monumental, it does represent a large and first step toward achieving a key goal of the Dagoo Harawaa program to bring back the spirit of “Dagoo”.
Current Projects and Future Plans
1. Expand Youth Group. See more information under “Culture, Recreation and Music”.
2. Increase Dagoo Harawaa Program. See more information under “Education”
3. Expand Villages Use of Dagoo. While the Youth Service Group and Dagoo Harawaa programs promote dagoo, they serve only a small portion of those in the village. Our goal is to work with village leaders and look for opportunities for dagoo to expand beyond the Village of Hope programs.
4. Women’s Group. This group will begin to invite the women of the village to become more active in brining to life the spirit of dagoo. See “Education”
How You Can Help: