Claire’s month with The School of St Yared
A little bit about me… Hi, I’m Claire. Usually, I work as a planner at GPY&R and IdeaWorks in Sydney, but in June 2016, I was given the opportunity through The International Exchange (TIE) to spend a month with incredible team at The School of St Yared in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I’ve been working with them for the last year or so, and I was very excited that TIE made it possible for me to spend time in country.
Introducing TIE The International Exchange links communications professionals with social enterprises, NGOs and not for profits around the world, and facilitates projects which benefit all involved. It was founded by Philippa White in 2006 and aims to change the world, (by changing the communications industry) one brief at a time.
Philippa, Founder
Janice, Coach
Set up for success‌ My TIE journey started long before I boarded my plane to Ethiopia. TIE runs a fantastic pre-departure training training programme covering everything from understanding the world of development, to personal coaching, to the practicalities of how to take money out at the airport when you arrive in country and the like. They also ask that you fundraise at least $2000 towards a marketing budget for your project.
January Wrote TIE application letter to Jon Steel and Jeremy Bullmore from WPP
February Awarded a TIE placement
April
May
Project dates confirmed. Preplacement training with TIE’s Janice Macnamara
Coaching with Janice & Pre-Departure call with Philippa. Ran Sydney Half Marathon & fundraised $2600.
June My month with The School of St Yared :)
Ethiopia
Ethiopia Ethiopia is a landlocked country in the horn of Africa, home to around 95 million people. It has seen double digit growth for much of the last decade, and aims to become a middle income country by 2025. However, it is ranked 174 out of 189 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index - many people still live well below the poverty line.
The School of St Yared The School of St Yared fights poverty through education. They provide an excellent, full scholarship bilingual education, three meals a day and regular health checks to some of the poorest and brightest children in Addis Ababa. Currently they educate 218 students from KG Grade 6. Since they were founded in 2009, their goal has been to empower their students to break free from poverty and become the future leaders of their communities and country. By 2022 they aim to provide K-12 full scholarship education to at least 800 students.
The students All students are confident, articulate and very positive about what their futures will hold. To see them in the classroom, makes it hard to imagine that their families live off less that $12 a week. However their education isn’t just benefiting them, it’s empowering them to create ripples of change in their communities too. I had the privilege of visiting Kalkidan at her home. Every afternoon, she teaches her cousins and other children from her neighbourhood lessons that she’s learnt that day at school.
The team The school has a passionate, dedicated team in Australia and Ethiopia. During my month, I spent my day to day with Yared & Jess but worked closely with everyone - which made for a lot of WhatsApp calls when the internet connection allowed.
Jacqui Co-Founder
Yared Co-Founder
Jess Technical Advisor
The founders Yared was orphaned as a child and forced to lived on the streets. He knows first hand how education can transform the life chances of marginalized children – it changed his life. Today he is a role model and change maker in his community – an inspirational symbol of hope for his students and their parents. Jacqui runs Hope for Children (HFC) – an Australian NGO that has worked with impoverished communities in Ethiopia for over a decade. The School of St Yared is one of the projects that HFC supports.
Tseganeh HFC Country Rep
Fitsum Principal
Hirut Head of Primary
Ann-Maree Amanda Terry Sponsorship Co-ordinator Educational Consultant Website & Comms Support
The challenge The school relies on individual student sponsorship and a small group of private donors for all its funding. Currently all students at the school are sponsored, but there is still a funding gap. As the school grows, it needs to find ways to increase its donor base and to diversify its funding stream to remain financially sustainable.
The brief Create the strategy & tools necessary to raise awareness of The School of St Yared’s work and help them to communicate with new sponsors and donors to increase their financial sustainability
Our approach Keep it real Our strategies and recommendations needed to be executable within the team’s current capacity in Ethiopia and Australia. (No one is dedicated to fundraising or communications 100% of the time.) Stay focussed The brief was meaty, so we prioritised three areas that would build foundations for the school’s future fundraising success over the short, medium and longer term. Let the school shine Thanks to its incredible students, dedicated teachers, progressive pedagogies and committed parent community, the school has a wealth of stories to tell. We wanted to ensure that we gave these stories a platform to shine.
Focus for the month
Three focus areas 1SHORT TERM
2 MEDIUM TERM
3 LONG TERM
- build engagement with existing online community of supporters
- develop a sustainable sponsorship model & a road map to make it happen
- identify key areas for fundraising & develop donor ask documents for each of them
1. Engaging their online community
Why? In the final two weeks of June, we ran a fundraising campaign to take advantage of the end of Australia’s financial year, which coincided with the end of the school’s academic year. This was our first annual appeal. How? Yared selected 14 reasons he was proud of what the school had achieved over the last year. Each story celebrated a different aspect of the school’s impact on its students and their communities. Each was framed in such a way to encourage donations. We called the campaign #14reasonstobeproud and released one story a day onto Facebook & Instagram, sharing weekly summaries with our email database. The final post was a short video that we created. We used some of our marketing budget that I’d fundraised to promote Facebook posts and were able to extend our reach beyond our most loyal supporters. Results? By the end of the campaign, we attracted c.100 new ‘likes’ and had raised about $3000. It’s a simple campaign format the team can use in the future too.
Example stories (Sent to email database & shared via social channels)
Final post of the campaign
Click the image above to see the campaign video on YouTube
2. A sustainable sponsor model
SPONSORSHIP
SCHOLARSHIP
Why? Since 2009, The School of St Yared has invited individual sponsors to donate $1100 annually to cover the cost of a student’s education. With inflation in Ethiopia, and the dwindling Australian dollar, we needed to bring the total cost of sponsorship in line with the true cost of providing quality education to the poorest and brightest students in Addis Ababa. How? We interrogated the school’s annual budget and discovered that the true cost of education was closer to $2000 per student. Taking into account donations from private donors, we agreed that the new total cost of sponsorship should be $1,500. After analysing other similar sponsorship structures, we developed a three tiered model that will open the opportunity for people from a wider range of incomes to support students at the school. We also decided to reframe our language so that it becomes a differentiator for us - from sponsorship (which suggests a hand out) to scholarship (which suggests a commitment to academic excellence).
2. A sustainable sponsor model Results? Phase 1 (still a work in progress) Working closely with the team in Perth, we’ve announced the change to existing sponsors via a letter in the end of year mail out, and a follow up email campaign. This is helping us identify how many existing sponsors are happy to commit to the increase, and how many new sponsors we should find to cover the cost of educating our existing students. Phase 2 (still to come) Depending on how many ‘extra’ sponsors we need to find to cover the cost of each existing students education, we will create a campaign, using the new scholarship model, to find and attract new sponsors at three different entry points. - Group Scholarship ($500 per year) - Shared Scholarship ($1000 per year) - Full Scholarship ($1500 per year)
3. A suite of fundraising asks Why? As the school grows, the team are becoming more targeted in the way that they approach donors. They need to secure longer term funding partners as well as one off donations. How? We identified areas of need and developed a suite of detailed fundraising documents that focus on different aspects of funding that the school needs to grow. e.g. Health, Professional Development, Nutrition, Transport, Technology etc. Each document combines quantitative and qualitative data to bring the need to life. Each can be tailored to approach donors who share similar interests. We have positioned these as three year commitments, for which the donor will become the exclusive Partner associated with that need in the school. Results? This toolkit is still to be rolled out, and potential donors are still being identified.
What we’ve achieved so far
Project outcomes 1SHORT TERM
2 MEDIUM TERM
3 LONG TERM
We raised $3000 for the school in their first ever annual appeal.
Our scholarship model & roll out plan will close the funding gap & make supporting a student’s education accessible to more people.
The fundraising documents will enable the team to approach donors with specific asks, increasing the chances of securing greater funding in the future.
Other highlights of my month
Visiting Workadise, the student I sponsor, and his family, at home.
Seeing the football team play at Addis National Stadium, cheered on by the Australian Ambassador.
Eating injera
Celebrating my birthday - with these lovely ladies!
Attending a parent committee meeting to discuss their microfinance initiative.
Drinking Coffee
Contributing to the 2022 Strategic Plan with Dr Worku.
Spending time with St Yared’s inspirational staff.
Key reflection
One last thing… Working with The School of St Yared through TIE has been a challenging, humbling, inspiring and utterly rewarding month that I will never forget. My month has made me understand just how critical an impact communications can have on an organisation, given me confidence in my own skill set and reminded me how important creativity is to solving problems. Regardless of whether you are working in an advertising agency in Sydney or you are a student in a school in Addis Ababa, there’s nothing more powerful than story telling & a great idea.
Here’s to #fightingpovertythrougheducation!
Thanks!