ICS Designates Three Charities for the 2nd Annual ICS Walk and Run Charity Event 

This year, ICS students, parents and staff will walk and run around the Haile Gebre Selassie running track to support three distinct charities as part of the annual Walk and Run Charity Event. Two of the three charities, the Children’s Burn Center of Ethiopia and Our Father’s Kitchen are long-term partners with ICS and provide students with service-learning opportunities throughout the year. The third charity, the Ethiopia Wolf Conservation program, adds a new dimension to charitable giving at ICS in support of wildlife conservation; this theme, tied with the Ethiopian wolves, was taught earlier in the year during the ICS Grade 9 field trip to Bale Mountains. For more details about the individual charities, please read a brief profile of each charity below.

Event Details:
When: Saturday 19 March: 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Where: ICS, Haile Gebre Selassie running track
Who: All students (ECE to 12), parents and staff are invited to walk and/or run
How: Prior to the event, walkers and runners will obtain sponsors who will donate a specific amount of money per completed lap or donate a fixed amount. Any and all walkers can sponsor themselves or their families. Students will be given sponsor forms prior to the event.

Four fun ways to participate in Walk & Run Charity Event:

1) Be a walker/runner - Pick up sponsor sheet and obtain sponsors for each lap around the track
2) Sponsor someone who will walk or run
3) Adults can volunteer to be lap counters at the walk/run event
4) Come out and cheer on the runners and shop at one of the charity sponsored shops! 

Charity Profiles

The Children’s Burn Care Foundation of Ethiopia (CBCF) - The Ethiopian burn unit, a unit especially designed for children, is the vision of Dr. Einar Eriksen of Norway. Dr. Eriksen recognized the need for a long term commitment to child burn victims in Ethiopia and in the future, all of East Africa; Dr. Eriksen established a Norwegian charity, the Children’s Burn Care Foundation Ethiopia (CBCF). In 2007 CBCF partnered with Myungsung Christian Medical Center (MCM) and established the first burn center for children in Ethiopia; there are currently five beds equipped to treat child burn victims. Each burn victim’s surgery costs about 13,000 Birr including rehabilitation.

Our Father’s Kitchen (OFK) – OFK is a project that aims to encourage children living in severe poverty, most living with HIV/AIDS, to go to school and to live healthy and happier lives. OFK does this by offering one meal a day to 150 children in two locations in Addis Ababa. OFK is not a traditional soup kitchen as the program keeps the children in the program until they are 18 years old. Additional medical support and monitoring is provided to the children by HAPSCA. Each balanced meal is provided at a cost of about 7 Birr per child; all donations go directly to food.

Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program (EWCP) – EWCP is a WildCRU (University of Oxford) endeavor to protect the Ethiopian wolf population (found only in scattered mountain pockets in Ethiopia) and their Afro alpine habitat. Fewer than 500 survive in small populations, threatened by habitat loss, climate change, disease and persecution. The goal is to conserve the Ethiopian wolf and Afro alpine habitats by addressing the most urgent threats to their survival. EWCP projects include a rabies vaccination and education program in the local communities of Bale.

For additional information or to volunteer for the Walk/Run Charity Event, please any of the following team members by email or by calling the main ICS number:

Erik Hathaway via email at erik.hathaway(at)icsaddis.edu.et
Seppo Lahdeaho via email at seppo.lahdeaho(at)icsaddis.edu.et
Derek Ferreira via email at derek.ferreira(at)icsaddis.edu.et
Traci Chanyalew via email at traci.chanyalew(at)icsaddis.edu.et