Awra Amba is an Ethiopian community of about 400 people, located in north East Gojjam, 62 Kilometers from Bahir Dar city, towards the way road to Debre Tabor. This community is the brain child of Zumra Nuru, currently a 60 year old farmer, who is the co -founder and co-chair of Awra Amba community.
In the 1980s, Zumra Nuru launched the society he dreamed of with 19 other people who adopted
His vision. Today Awra Amba has some 400 members and is lauded as a model to alleviate poverty and promote gender equality, model center for Reproductive health, area of best practices of leadership and in a country where women generally hold a subservient status to men. Subsequently, in Awra Amba community, men cook, women plow, and religion has no place.
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The community is distinct in that its members work together, are diligent, disciplined and self-confident. Children get access to primary education in a school run by members of the community itself. The main means of livelihood for the community is weaving. Women have equal rights as men and there is no distinction in divisions of labor between male and their female counterparts.
All people in the community have no religion as distinct from most communities in Ethiopia. The village is unique not only for its attitudes toward gender, religion, and education, but for the
Social security it provides its members in need. There's a home for the elderly with 24-hour care
and a committee that helps out new mothers, who also get three months of maternity leave. Early
and forced marriages are forbidden. |
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