Restoring Dignity- Update- Cafe Juniper Opens

Soroptimists - Restoring Dignity
Our new Juniper Café is soon to be opened near the lake at
Desta Mender, and set among many juniper trees!
It is near our teaching or conference centre where we hope
to attract groups, who want a pleasant place to hold a day
conference, and where they can buy food from our café. We
are enormously grateful to the Soroptimist International
organisation for raising all the money for this café through
the 2007 and 2008 President’s Day Appeals, called “Restoring
Dignity”. We want to thank the President of the Soroptimists
for those 2 years, Margaret Lobo, for choosing the Hospital to
be the recipient of this large donation – which also paid for a
hard-top vehicle for use at Desta Mender. We hope Ms. Lobo
will visit us for some celebrations in May or June and will then
be able to unveil a plaque in the café telling of the assistance
provided by so many Soroptimist women.
We are also most grateful to Rae Newman, from Canberra,
who has done all the work in a voluntary capacity, in training
the girls from Desta Mender who will be the future cooks and
managers of the café. Rae has also worked hard at selecting all
the equipment and furniture we need for the café – kitchen,
and storerooms and an attractive eating area with tables and
colourful table cloths!
We are sure this will be a great attraction, not only to help
us financially, but to make known the plight of so many
fistula sufferers in this great country. We ate there a few
days ago, after holding our weekly management meeting in
the conference room. We had a delicious lunch, eating true
Australian meat pies, and other delicacies, all made by the girls
under Rae’s tutorship!
I have just realised this is our first letter in the New Year – so
I send you all our warm greetings, and wish you much joy, and
may God be with each of you through the months ahead.
Dr E. Catherine Hamlin AC
The Fund joins Dr Hamlin in expressing its grateful appreciation
to AusAID, Soroptimist International and all the Fund’s other
supporters for their generous assistance towards the work of
the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.
The Foreign Minister with Dr Hamlin and a fistula patient.