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Stories written by Shelley Callahan

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Country Roads and City Slums

Leaving Ethiopia and reflecting on time spent in Africa

We’ve been in Ethiopia for just a few days and we’re already packing up for our next stop in Nairobi, Kenya. As we prepare to hit the road, I am struck by the contrasts between urban and rural poverty. In a way, it’s not unlike America — the rural poor living in run-down trailers off dirt roads in Eastern Kentucky bear little resemblance to the urban poor in housing projects of Detroit. When businesses move […]

Holding up a Mirror to the Hopeful Children of Rural Ethiopia

Visiting our affiliated project Kids Hope Ethiopia in Shashamane

Mirror images Most of us don’t remember the first time we ever saw ourselves. In the West, babies encounter mirrors, camera lenses and video cameras from birth. And the self-imagery just becomes part of our life, for the rest of our lives. But in rural Ethiopia, seeing yourself is a rare experience. We discovered just how magical it is to see your own face when we entered the Kids Hope compound outside Shashamane, Ethiopia. We had […]

A Rainbow in Addis Ababa

Helping Ethiopian children through hunger, disease and housing shortages

Many of us don’t know much about Ethiopia beyond their 1985 famine, highly publicized by Michael Jackson and his “We Are the World” campaign. But things have changed significantly here over the last 31 years. In response to that devastating famine, which killed an estimated one million people, the Ethiopian government developed a program to relocate its citizens from the drought-ravaged north to the southern part of the country, where there were fewer people and […]

Ready for Takeoff

Children Incorporated staff visit affiliated projects in Africa

It’s a long way from Kentucky to Ethiopia – 7,432 miles to be exact; twice as far as the Bolivia-to-Kentucky trip we just made. One would think the differences in the three locales are profound, but other than the climates, they are strikingly similar. Children play in the roads near dilapidated homes and other signs of obvious poverty. But they laugh and sing, clad in pants and t-shirts and sneakers, pretending to be sports stars […]

Sending Relief After Flash Floods

Our Hope In Action Fund helps families in Dunlow, West Virginia after severe flooding

Wayne County lies nestled amid the vast natural beauty of the Allegheny Mountains, which still conceal deposits of the coal that once made this a rich and populous area of the Mountaineer State. Automation of mines and the ecological stigmas attached to coal as a fuel source have seriously damaged Wayne County’s economy. With coal mining almost shut down, all businesses that once depended on mining – and the buying power of the miners — […]

From Kentucky to Kenya

The universal truth of children

“I don’t know who gave us these bikes, but tell her I love her!” The boy’s words keep echoing in my mind as we make the eight-hour trek from Kentucky back to Richmond, Va. Over the course of the last several weeks, we’ve met with so many children I’ve nearly lost count, but their faces and words stand out in my memory. Kentucky and Bolivia are worlds apart, but there are many similarities between the […]