Children represent the future. They are the cornerstone of any society’s long-term social and economic development and the foundation on which the future is shaped to build a modern and prosperous society. Therefore, how children are raised, educated, and nurtured has a profound impact on their individual lives as well as the wellbeing, stability and prosperity of their countries and the world at large.  This makes the task of caring for children, protecting their rights and providing them with proper healthcare, education, nutrition and a safe and loving environment the responsibility of not only parents but also governments.

There is ample evidence showing that the first few years of a child’s life are critical for building long-term physical, mental, emotional and educational development. This means that children coming from poorer backgrounds start life at a disadvantage and are at greater risk of missing opportunities for learning and being left behind than their peers from more affluent backgrounds.

Missing these opportunities also means the children pay the price in lost potential in the future and will go through life with poor physical and mental health, struggling to learn and unable to work in professions that will earn them a good living. In this scenario, it is not only the children, but society as a whole that pays the price. In short, failure to give children the best start in life and provide them with the right nourishment, education, love and inspirational guidance during the early stages of their development can lead to perpetuation of cycles of poverty and disadvantages that can span generations, undermining the strength and stability of societies.

According to UNICEF, a United Nations agency for children, this is the fate facing millions of children who live in the developing world, especially in the 43 poorest countries that the UN has classified as Least Developed, of which 32, including Ethiopia, are in Africa. Most children in these countries do not receive proper nutrition, healthcare, and education. Most of them also grow up in an environment where conflict and violence are becoming increasingly common, the frequency of natural disasters are increasing, and the opportunities for learning and acquiring knowledge through formal education and exposure to new ideas have become limited, especially since the disruption of schools in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Like other poor countries, the abandonment of children in Ethiopia is not a new phenomenon. However, the problem has been exacerbated lately by recent social, economic and political problems, including the increase in the number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) due to conflict.

The latest UNICEF estimate shows that there are more than four million orphans and abandoned children under the age of 18 in Ethiopia, more than four percent of the population. This growing problem is largely due to regional conflicts, drought, natural disasters, HIV and poverty. Some 600,000 children live on the streets, 100,000 of them in Addis alone. These figures may have underestimated the problem but still they highlight the scale of the challenge and the urgent need for specialized and holistic support systems and comprehensive child protection measures to address the welfare of these vulnerable children.

Increasingly, poorer parents are finding it practically impossible to provide their children with proper care and a safe living environment, much less to feed them. Left to fend for themselves without adequate public support, children as young as 2-to-4 years, sometimes accompanied by slightly older siblings, beg in the streets of Addis Ababa and other cities for food or money to buy the next meal. Some of them are abandoned at birth or just a few months later, left near a church or orphanage. Most of them eventually face abuse, trafficking, or addiction to dangerous substances. Mental and physical illness is also common.

The government is doing its part to address the problem. Under the direction of the Addis Ababa City Administration, the Addis Ababa Bureau for Women, Children and Social Affairs is responsible for overseeing the welfare of children in the city and cares for orphans and abandoned children, vulnerable teenage girls, boys and juveniles. At national level, the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs is responsible for child protection, women’s empowerment, youth development and support to vulnerable groups such as the elderly and people with disabilities.

One of the well-known and government-run orphanages in Addis Ababa is Kebebe Tsehay, which provides support to children ranging in age from a few months to 8 years. However, like other government-run orphanages, Kebebe Tsehay faces many challenges, including limited resources, inadequate space, lack of equipment and, above all, lack of trained personnel and the knowledge necessary to offer a home-environment for the children.

Another government-run institution is the Ketchene Girls Home, which provides care and support for girls approximately aged 10 to 18. This institution looks after teenage girls at a critical stage of their development to prepare them for adulthood performing a role that normally would have been played by the children’s parents. This is a herculean task under normal circumstances let alone for an overcrowded government-run institution with limited resources and lacking the skills and knowledge needed to provide the young ladies with the emotional and psychological support and the essential learning skills that are typically taught within a family environment.

For abandoned children living in the streets of a large city, the potential for turning to criminality as survival mechanism is high and a major challenge for the City Administration. To cope with this growing problem, the Addis Ababa City authorities has established the Lideta Rehabilitation Centre, which is a facility for accommodating and rehabilitating juveniles between the ages of 9 and 15 years old. The Centre can accommodate up to 700 juveniles, and it is the only institution of its kind in Ethiopia.

Despite these efforts, the public sector finds it challenging to meet the needs of abandoned children. Their steadily mounting numbers mean ever-greater malnutrition, lack of shelter, and shrinking access to healthcare and education. Managing this crisis requires a comprehensive strategy and a multi-stakeholder approach to childcare, where an increasingly critical role is being provided by specialized Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

SHAMIDA is one such organization, the brainchild of a remarkable woman, Australian-born Karen Kendall. Karen originally came to Ethiopia in 2012 to adopt her first child, Ruby, before her first birthday. The experience opened Karen’s eyes to the immense challenges faced by the country’s abandoned and orphaned children and their daily struggle for survival in an environment almost totally lacking in proper childcare and child protection.

Karen, a lawyer with two degrees from reputable Australian universities, was then based in Dubai, managing her own successful legal business providing advisory services in property law. She started her company in 2008, in the midst of the global financial crisis and at a time when Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, was fast becoming a significant regional and international trade hub with an expanding demand for advisory services in property law.

For Karen, however, managing a thriving new business and living happily in Dubai with her adopted Ethiopian daughter was not enough. She wanted to do more for children in her daughter’s home country, especially the abandoned and disadvantaged. In 2014, she left her company in Dubai and returned to Ethiopia to start a non-profit local NGO with an ambitious plan. The primary and long-term goal was to revolutionize the care and protection of abandoned children in Ethiopia by implementing high standards, best practices and a holistic approach.

After some initial setbacks and spending two years to obtain a license, Karen launched SHAMIDA in 2015 with six resident children. SHAMIDA is an acronym for the core values and philosophy that Karen believes are critical for providing effective childcare support: Sustainability, Humanity, Authenticity, Mindfulness, Inclusion, Diversity and Advocacy. After settling in Ethiopia, Karen fostered her second Ethiopian daughter, Daisy, now seven years old.

SHAMIDA is not the only NGO that provides childcare support for abandoned and orphaned children in Ethiopia. But within a short period, it has become a key player and trendsetter in the field. This is largely because of its distinctive business model, which is caring, forward-looking and holistic, instead of focusing solely on shelter, food and protection. Its vision is “to create a self-sustaining and inclusive environment where unique abilities are fostered, individuals valued and educated, and every child has a home”. SHAMIDA’s caring and loving family setting offers its children a better life, quality healthcare, and education that meets their psychological and social needs. In this respect, SHAMIDA has lifted the bar high as a role model on how abandoned children should be cared and grow in a home environment that nurtures their aspiration for a promising and bright future.

This ambitious goal requires not only resources, which are critical, but also the best staff with diverse and relevant skills and experience, as well as a commitment to SHAMIDA’S principles and core values. Even for volunteers, SHAMIDA insists on having relevant skills, but more importantly, a total commitment to what SHAMIDA stands for.

The organization currently has 65 such staff working as a team under Karen’s guidance and leadership. Their skills range from management, nursing and child psychology to nutrition, cooking, training and babysitting. Still other staff provide technical support and assist with partnerships and resource mobilization. Assembling such diverse skills has enabled SHAMIDA to provide a wide range of services that go well beyond its original mission. SHAMIDA is currently engaged in five main initiatives:

Providing abandoned and orphaned children with holistic, comprehensive childcare. This includes food, shelter, education, preliminary healthcare, and psychological and emotional support, ensuring that the children grow up in a nurturing environment.

Nurturing and preparing children for adoption. SHAMIDA shelters and looks after children as young as a few days, some of them undernourished and stunted. It gives them a safe and caring home environment and nutritious food, monitors their health and finds them loving adoptive homes within Ethiopia. The organization is a strong proponent of domestic adoption and of keeping children within their own cultural environment. Even if it takes longer to arrange adoption, especially for disabled children and those with special needs, SHAMIDA provides the necessary support, including access to education through in-house training programmes or enrolment in schools. An estimated 40 percent of the children it supports have special needs, often the result of childhood trauma or disability at birth.

Supporting vulnerable women. SHAMIDA works with destitute and vulnerable women in the community, especially single women with younger children who are in danger of falling into a permanent poverty trap. The goal is to empower these women, especially the sole income generators for their households, through training, the provision of seed money to start businesses, and assistance with their children’s nourishment and education. Parents do not willingly abandon their children—a criminal offence in Ethiopia—unless they feel they have no other option. SHAMIDA strives to prevent parents, especially single mothers, from reaching this point.

To identify the vulnerable women, the organization relies on a list that the Addis authorities regularly share with kebeles—the country’s smallest administrative units at the neighbourhood level—to alert them to impoverished households in their areas that need support. The households are first identified by assessing their socioeconomic vulnerabilities in such areas as food security, livelihoods, income sources, expenditure patterns and coping mechanisms. Next, the authorities analyse the underlying causes of those vulnerabilities and their impact on households. SHAMIDA takes it from there, providing the mothers with specialized vocational training to start a small business, generate income and pay for essential goods and services like medicines and healthcare. The organization’s advisory and other direct support gives these women hope, pride and the capacity to raise their children with dignity.

Supporting government-run orphanages and correction institutions. SHAMIDA’s holistic approach to childcare is gaining increased recognition as a role model in childcare services and child protection in Ethiopia. Since 2022, the Bureau for Women, Children and Social Affairs has relied on the organization to upgrade the quality and efficiency of government-run orphanages and correctional centres. SHAMIDA’s assistance to local authorities covers a wide range of areas including capacity-building through training and advisory services, renovation of facilities and creating an environment that is child-friendly and safe. It also strengthens the child protection system through training and the introduction of best practices.

In government-run Kebebe Tsehay Orphanage, SHAMIDA has helped renovate the kitchens and living quarters, build playgrounds, provide industrial equipment such as generators and trained and employed staff to provide high-quality childcare. The organization has also supported the Ketchene Girls Home, teaching the skills needed for the girls to obtain jobs and become productive members of the community once they leave the home. Yet another government-run institution helped by SHAMIDA is the Lideta Rehabilitation Centre in Addis, where the organization provided 9-to-15-year-old juveniles with the psychological and practical support they will need for life outside the centre.

Family reunification. SHAMIDA has been working hard to reunite abandoned children with their families, including by providing the material support the parents need to care for the children and create a stable family life and a safe environment.

From the above, it is evident that SHAMIDA is not only beginning to have a lasting impact on Ethiopia’s child protection system, but it is also highly likely to achieve the ambitious goal that the founder, Karen Kendall, imagined from the start, which is “to redefine how abandoned children are cared for in Ethiopia”. The challenges are many, the most worrisome being the growing number of abandoned children in Addis Ababa and other major urban centres, which according to UNICEF has been “increasing in recent years due to poverty, family breakdown, and rural-to-urban migration”. The situation underscores the need for enhanced social protection measures and support systems to address the vulnerabilities faced by these children.

Another key challenge for SHAMIDA is to mobilize resources, which takes up more and more of Karen’s time. The cost of running facilities and providing holistic support and access to the best care rises in line with the increasing cost of living and inflationary trends. In 2018 the cost per child was equivalent to USD 150 per year; by late 2024 the figure had risen to USD 5,000. Nearly 1,000 children currently benefit from SHAMIDA’s direct and indirect support, but the number is growing. More and more abandoned children and children with special needs who cannot be looked after by their parents are arriving, some as young as a few months. Aware of the challenges of mobilizing resources, SHAMIDA has kept its operational costs to a minimum (less than 20 percent) while ensuring that about 80 percent of the funds mobilized are spent on the children.

SHAMIDA’s strength comes from Karen Kendall’s “courage in thinking outside the box”, says one of the volunteers at SHAMIDA. She aspires to provide the best childcare possible despite numerous challenges, including the slow response and lack of awareness of the importance of a holistic approach to childcare by local authorities. As SHAMIDA staff have learned, when abandoned children are given the best start in life, the benefits are huge, for every child and for society as a whole.

Karen’s greatest ambition is to move SHAMIDA into a “forever home”, where abandoned and orphaned children are cared for in a loving, inclusive, educational, healthy and safe home environment. This involves working closely with other partners on two related goals: extending the organization’s presence and operational model across Ethiopia, and keeping families together through pre-emptive actions. Foremost among these is to empower women and address some of the core factors that contribute to economic vulnerability and abject poverty.

Contributed by Alison Tesfachew