Welcoming Families From Around the World

Welcoming a family from Ethiopia, 

Ethiopia is located in the horn of Africa, is endowed with a lot of history from being the country with one of the oldest sites of human existence.

Facts we need to know

The Ethiopian calendar has 13 months and it is 7 or 8 years behind the Western calendar

Ethiopians celebrated their new year on September 11.

Although child marriage is illegal in Ethiopia, 49% of girls marry before 18 and nearly 1 in 5 Ethiopian girls is married before 15. Almost half of 15- to 19- year-old girls in the Amhara region have been or currently are married.

Ethiopia ranks as the 5th poorest country in the world. Almost two-thirds of the Ethiopian populations lives on less than US$1 a day.

Traditionally, Ethiopian parents and children do not share a last name. Most children take their father’s first name as their last name.

In some monasteries and holy sites in Ethiopia, ancient law prohibits women from setting foot inside the holy confines. This also extends to all female creatures, including donkeys, hens, and nanny goats

Ethiopia’s national language is Amharic, but there are over 82 languages and 200 dialects, or variations, spoken in the country.

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There are more than 41,000,000 children living in Ethiopia, 650,000 of them orphaned by AIDS, with a further 92,000 infected themselves. In total there are a staggering four million children who are orphans in Ethiopia, and is estimated that a further 200,000 children are becoming orphaned in Ethiopia every year. To understand some of these figures it should be noted that one in four Ethiopian women die during pregnancy or childbirth, a figure exacerbated by the fact that only 6% of all births are attended to be a suitably qualified and knowledgeable health professionals, partly because those who do get educated move abroad to earn their money. For example, there are more Ethiopian trained doctors living in Chicago than in the whole of Ethiopia. This lack of suitably qualified adults in all aspects of Ethiopian society is reflected in the general cultural aversion to education by society. Although children are expected to complete eight years of primary education which is free, two years in lower secondary school and the same again in higher secondary school, in reality most people in Ethiopia would prefer their children to work rather than attend school and by doing so complete household chores and contribute to the family income.

This is even more true in rural areas when attendance rates are much lower than in urban areas. This is reflected in literacy rates of 50% for males dropping to just 35% for females. As such 44% of all Ethiopian children grow up in poverty and few of them can expect to see their fiftieth birthday. For those who do manage to survive there are the ongoing issues of food security with around five million Ethiopians in chronic food shortage given the repeated droughts of recent years. This is having an impact on children living in urban areas of Ethiopia as the lack of food production is driving up prices in cities such as Addis Ababa where malnutrition is becoming ripe with the price of wheat alone having gone up by 80% in just twelve months.(child-sponsorship.com)

Now that I have researched the country and culture, and children's environment.  I would have to find some ways to connect with the family, 

1 - finding dialect of language they speak

2 - how much education the parents have

3 - where they are on the calendar as opposed to where we are.  

4 - find someone who can produce an introduction paper for the family to ensure they understand and best ways to communicate with them.

5 - Provide resource information for the family on  how what they are entitled to,

Understanding the students life outside the classroom enables us as teachers to create some relevant lessons that help the child connect to learning and feel included as a values part of out class.  Educating ourselves to a child's customs and rituals allows  understand the amount of time a child has for schooling and what their other responsibilities may be.

In my assumption on the scenario we are at the beginning of the school year.  Knowing now that is child may celebrate a new year in September  I would want to create a celebration for the child to show this child we acknowledge and respect where they are from.   This will allow the other children to look outside the US box.  I picked Ethiopia because they follow a different calendar, have many dialects of language, cultural differences, such as being married at the ages we are sending children to high school.  The environment here is so different from how they are raised and the culture they are used to.  I would love to be able to provide them with as much support and knowledge they need to know to live her in America.