Rotary Club of Holland helps Ethiopians help themselves

Holland-The cost of groceries might be rising, but a loaf of bread in the U.S. costs a few dollars, not miles of travel by foot or animal.
In Gore, Ethiopia, women use stones to grind their own grain by hand. If they want to bring their grain to a mill, they must travel great distances by mule, donkey or foot.

The Rotary Club of Holland wants to ease the burden for the women of this community of about 8,000. They want to build an electric-powered mill that could serve 30,000 people living in Gore and its outskirts.

“It’s not going to be a huge factory,” Gary Bogle said. “It’s a pretty basic grain-grinding machine. People come in with their bags of grain, they pay a small fee or they give a percent of their grain as payment for using it.”

It’s a seemingly simple plan Bogle decided to pursue after attending an international Rotary Club conference in Montreal last year.

Bogle spent time in Ethiopia teaching music on a military base. He was interested in connecting with someone from an Ethiopian Rotary Club in Montreal.

“I was just looking to make a contact, with no project in mind,” he said.

Bogle met with Gebre Bekele, a member of the Rotary Club of Addis Ababa West, based in Ethiopia’s capital city.

He told Bogle about Gore and what a difference an electric mill could make for the village.

Bekele was born and grew up in Gore, then attended business school and moved to Addis Ababa.

Bekele remembers when Gore had jobs to offer on private coffee farms. But things changed following the Dergue — a military junta that led to the Ethiopian Civil War and a period of human rights abuses and famine.

The government confiscated all land, and Bekele’s family lost its farm, Bekele wrote in an email to The Sentinel from Addis Ababa.

“A grain mill in Gore will be the first of its kind,” Bekele wrote. “It will save the women long-distance travel from their houses to the nearest grinding mill. It is planned that grain for sale would be made available at the mill site at an affordable price.”

The Gore project will cost about $21,000 (or 346,500 Birr, the Ethiopian currency) and should become self-sustaining in about three years, Bogle said.

That price includes not only the mill, but the land, supplies, transformer installation, transportation of materials and educating the community about the new resources. It also includes money for 50 beehives to produce honey, as well as coffee and tree seeds.

Generations of villagers cutting down trees for firewood has caused significant deforestation, Bogle said.

The Holland Rotary Club hopes to finish collecting funds for the project by January. To date, it has raised about $6,100. Bogle anticipates several other grants and funds might be able to match what already has been raised.
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