Ethiopia

The Pharo Foundation’s country office is in Addis Ababa. The Foundation implements its programmes in the Benishangul Gumuz regional state (BGRS) and has an office in Assosa.

The Foundation’s priority areas in Ethiopia are education, agriculture, health and water. We are working to help Ethiopians improve their livelihoods with an emphasis on economic self-reliance and job creation.

After an initial 3-year Integrated Livelihood Development programme, the Foundation launched a 5-year Social and Economic Empowerment Programme (SEEP) in 2020. SEEP focuses on agriculture, health, education and WASH.

• Education – the Foundation runs the Pharo Primary School Assosa and the Pharo Homosha, an all-girl boarding school. In BGRS, the Foundation has renovated nineteen substandard classroom blocks and built a new primary school with model ECE, and numerous school toilets including providing water for these facilities, helping to improve the learning environment in 11 schools reaching more than 10,000 students.
• Health – the Foundation is working to increase public awareness on health and sanitation issues, provide health care workers training, renovation of government health centres, construction of an intensive care unit (ICU) and a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Assosa General Hospital, and 3 other health facilities in the region. In 2022, the Foundation launched the Pharo Diagnostic Centre, the only full-service diagnostic lab in the entire region.
• Water – In Ethiopia’s BGRS, the Foundation rehabilitated 11 shallow and 5 deep wells. This enabled the generation of over 200,000 litres of clean drinking water for households within the various communities. Pharo also engineered the digging of a pipeline bringing additional water to Asossa from nearly 11 kms away to approximately 11,000 people.
• Agriculture – the Foundation has introduced good agricultural practices aimed at diversifying livelihood options, increasing agricultural production and productivity, and increasing household income. Additionally, we are supporting poultry, beekeeping, animal fattening, crop producers as well as goat and sheep herders. The Foundation established 4 Pharo farmers’ training centres in the BGRS targeting approximately 6,400 farmers and providing comprehensive agricultural extension service-based demonstration workshops.