Our Mission
To connect impoverished families with sponsors whose donations provide supplemental income to help meet sponsored families’ basic needs of food, shelter, and education. F2F strives to develop long-term sustainable supportive relationships between sponsors and recipient families by fostering a personal connection between them. F2F sponsors believe that alleviating the struggle to provide for their children’s basic needs gives the families a foundation on which to improve their future.
Our Process
Donations are given directly to families in monthly payments. Each family also receives two additional gifts; one in August to help with school supplies and another in December for Christmas. Sponsors receive a quarterly written reports and a photo of their sponsored child. Sponsors may send letters, cards, and photos to their sponsored family. F2F welcomes any sponsors who want to meet their recipient families participate in our annual trips to Ethiopia.
Our Story
In 2008, a woman who would become a dear friend walked into my portrait studio with her newly adopted baby girl from Ethiopia. Over the next year of portrait sessions, we bonded over her volunteer work and love for her daughter’s birth country. When she asked me to help her with a Christmas party for her daughter’s orphanage, I happily joined her in Addis. It became the first of many trips.
On each visit to Ethiopia, I would photograph children for their sponsors or adoptive families and sponsored a child myself. In 2013, my daughter Ava, who was then nine, started going to Addis with me to visit her sponsor sister, Selamawit. Together we worked on different projects; fundraising, collecting and delivering clothes and toys, and writing sponsor reports. Over several years, we got to know the 16 children who are now part of Family2Family. We met them at a day care center run by another non-profit, Encourage Ethiopia. The center was a loving environment for the children ranging in age from 11 months to 3 years. By the time Encourage Ethiopia closed in 2018, we were attached to the kids and wanted to stay involved in their lives. We launched Family2Family to connect them with sponsors who would help the children and their families thrive.
Our Team
From left:
Amele - Encourage Ethiopia Project Coordinator
Elena - President Family2Family
Ehete - Encourage Ethiopia Project Coordinator
Jesse - Vice President Family2Family
Ephrem - CCELA Project Coordinator
A country facing many challenges
With about 123 million people (2022), Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in Africa. While it is one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, it also remains one of the poorest. It faces many challenges inhibiting economic growth and the wellbeing of its people.
✦ huge political and economic challenges due to recurrent droughts and floods in some parts of the country, poor infrastructure and a very high inflation rate.
✦ Since November 2020, the conflict between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has prevented international cooperation, leading to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation.
Statistics about Ethiopia can be found here:
