Through Every Dark Night, There’s a Bright Day

Congratulations on the 50th anniversary of JICA volunteers in Ethiopia; I am very proud to be a part of that history.

I was in Ethiopia from August 2018 to November 2021 leading the Volunteer section at the JICA Ethiopia Office. During this period, we began trying to dispatch volunteers to NGO’s. Historically, volunteers were only sent to government organizations due to the stipulations of Ethiopian law. only. Fortunately, a new law was passed in 2019 and JICA negotiated with the Ministry of Woman and Youth to place volunteers. I visited the Ministry for discussions many times and eventually we were able to meet the Minister and she accepted JICA’s request to dispatch volunteers to NGOs. We were the very first organization to begin this process and we received 6 requests from NGOs that wanted a JICA volunteer to be placed with them. In our own internal requirement process, we were able to find 5 volunteers in Japan that wanted to match with the NGOs.

Unfortunately, we had to suspend the dispatch of volunteers in March 2020 due to the COVID 19 pandemic. All the volunteers that were already in Ethiopia were evacuated to Japan and the volunteer program was suspended. This time was followed by a period of conflict in Ethiopia, which began in November 2020 and I almost gave up hope that volunteers would return to Ethiopia.

However, this year, we have been given the green light to have volunteers back in Ethiopia!

It is also the year where we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Japanese volunteers in Ethiopia! This is a time where I frequently think of the saying “Through every dark night, there’s a bright day’.

I wish for peace in Ethiopia and for the number of volunteers to increase to pre-COVID19 times.

Thank you.