Against the backdrop of those bleak facts, the students at the Mekele School for the Blind have an advocate of their very own, Norfolk resident Chris Hanley, who recently received the Northwestern Connecticut Community College 2009 Outstanding Alumni Award for her work in Ethiopia. She first discovered the school in the same year that the Ethiopian study was published and has been raising money and improving life at the Mekele School since then.
"I was moved to make a difference because the situation is very grim," she said.
Ms. Hanley, who teaches art in the Northwest Corner, traveled to Africa for an art exchange between Region 1 school district seventh-graders and an African school. Students created triptychs, or traditional religious art pieces that depicted their lives and personalities. Encouraged by another teacher, she visited the state-run Mekele School.
She discovered 100 children ages 6 to 15 in poor physical and emotional health enduring ghastly conditions. They slept in small dormitories with concrete or dirt floors. They survived on one gruel pancake a day. Without walking sticks or shoes, they stumbled and cut their feet on the treacherous, rocky schoolyard. They lacked meaningful and consistent human contact. After arriving at the school alone and usually without much information, it is not uncommon for the students to never hear from their parents again. The two teachers sometimes did not show up and several of the girls had been physically assaulted.
"They are often just left there," Ms. Hanley explained. "There's no future for them."
Despite that fact that most blindness in Ethiopia is attributed to preventable causes such as parasites and trachoma, treatable with antibiotics, blindness is considered a curse. Children suffer the consequences of that belief the most.
Upon her return to America, Ms. Hanley established a grassroots organization and began generating interest among friends in Connecticut and Ireland, as well as raising funds from local charities, groups and individuals. With the help and advice of an Ethiopian friend and teacher, she and the organization then began addressing each of the challenges in the students' lives in whatever way was possible.
The first project was to clear the overgrowth of eucalyptus trees and smooth out the ground on the school's four-acre property. The group then erected a stone security wall. Next came 90 mattresses and pillows, walking sticks and shoes. The organization built a clinic, hired a nurse, whose salary the government agreed to pay, and stocked the cabinets with medicine. It also arranged for the delivery of fruit and vegetables three times a week.
In order to ensure the students had an educational experience, a library was built. Ms. Hanley personally carried more than 400 Braille books. A librarian oversees the collection, while a blind library assistant teaches the students Braille, as well as acting as a tangible inspiration. Using a grant, Ms. Hanley's godson and some of his fellow students from Kenyon College spent six weeks at the Mekele School teaching the Ethiopian students how to type with a laptop English program.
The project is an opportunity for the students to learn a life skill. After turning 16, they must leave the school to find their own way in the world, either at a regular school or elsewhere.
Foreseeing the danger of abandoning the children after their time at the school, Ms. Hanley founded a $20 a month sponsorship program, now administered by a friend in Kansas.
To date, the organization has raised about $75,000 thanks to generous sources in the area, in particular the Torrington Rotary Club and Lions Clubs throughout the Northwest Corner.
For more information on the Mekele School and the organization, visit the Web site at www.mekeleblindschool.org.