Brief History of the Founding of FICDO

At the end of 2017, Ewnetu Ermias, an IT professional, took a career break to pursue a volunteering opportunity in Ethiopia. This experience spurred his desire for change, resulting in the founding of FICDO.

Ewnetu’s volunteering experience commenced in his home town of Fitche, central Ethiopia, when he returned as a volunteer after two decades of living in Europe. He observed that little had changed in his home town. Despite the abundance of natural and human resources, poverty is still rampant. Many vulnerable elderly are not only poverty-stricken but also suffer from loneliness. Young girls and boys are not attending school for lack of basic resources.

In most cases, children as young as seven and eight have to work to support their guardians or other family members. Ewnetu admits that what he saw was not new to him as he grew up in poverty himself. “But,” he recalls, “my parents sacrificed everything and gave me an opportunity to go to school”. He knows what it means to get an opportunity.

Ewnetu realised that the situation on the ground was overwhelmingly challenging, but he also believed that small hope-filled acts of kindness could improve people’s lives. Hence, he started engaging with like-minded people, visiting the most marginalised within the community, the elderly. This kick-started an informal “befriending” service which caught the attention of others in the community. Ewnetu recalls, “...wherever we went and started speaking about poverty in our community, we saw a strong support and willingness to change the status quo”. It seemed that many people were aware of the social and economic challenges but did not know how to respond as an individual.

However, this is not to say that there were no naysayers. Discouraged by past negative experiences and failed efforts, some were cautious about the new initiative. Throughout the first half of 2019, the small group who were determined to see change pushed forward and built relationships with community members in Addis, who have been informally organised for a similar cause.

In June 2019, a group of community leaders and friends of Fitche met in a small Office in Addis Ababa University’s College of Commerce and formed FICDO. The organisation is wholly volunteer-led and run by local community members. FICDO’s core belief is that, with proper support and an enabling environment, every community has what it takes to transform and flourish. The goal, therefore, is to create a platform for the community to tackle common challenges and try new things to create and innovate. The organisational mottoes “Love in Action” and “Better Together” aim at embedding mutual caring into the everyday life of the community.