Meet Hiwet & Kalkidan’s Family!
Hiwet & Kalkidan
Hiwet and her daughter, Kalkidan
Hiwet is a young woman who works hard despite her circumstances. While having grown up in Gojam in Northern Ethiopia, she and her daughter Kalkidan now live in Kore and struggle to make it here. At 18 years old, Hiwet faces the reality of raising her one year old daughter within an impoverished community, without a husband to provide for them since he left the family along the way.
To try to provide for the $5/month rent for their mud and tin room as well as food and basic needs for her and Kalkidan, Hiwet has become a Kolo seller. Kolo is a traditional Ethiopian snack which is quite tasty roasted barley. Hiwet’s job is to visit small makeshift Bars that are made out of tarps in people’s front yards and sell this snack food to them. The clientele of these Bars are mostly men coming to drink Tej (honey wine) or Tela (grain alcohol made from barley) who themselves are very poor. She goes from makeshift bar to makeshift Bar selling a handful of Kolo for pennies. 
Until a week ago Kalkidan made this same journey with her mom day after day. Strapped to Hiwet’s back she would spend the day selling Kolo with her mom in these rough establishments. Now, she’s attending the day care on a daily basis, is receiving 2 meals per day, is having fun playing with the other children, and will have opportunities to learn new things. She also will be able to receive medical care eventually for some hearing problems that she has had since birth that are possibly related to a visit to a cultural doctor while Hiwet was pregnant with her. There also are ways that we are supporting Hiwet and giving her opportunity to become more sustainable while also helping with food, hygiene, medical and other holistic interventions, not to mention a freedom to be able to work, but with the ability for her family to stay intact.
She, like the other vulnerable families we work with, live on that delicate edge of not making it, yet we know that there is a full hope that is extended in Jesus’ name to the whole person which can be embraced. If you’d like a bit more information about Kalkidan and her mom Hiwet, click on the link below.
https://www.embracinghopeethiopia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/KALKIDAN_EHE028_sponsorship_infosheet.pdf or see other families we are searching for sponsors for at www.embracinghopeethiopia.com/sponsorships
Thank you for praying for this beautiful family and for considering sponsoring them.
Wow- my heart is full reading through your posts. Found out about your ministry through the new video done. One of the adoptive families we went with posted it! We would love to be apart of sponsoring a family.