All problems can be solved providing one has tremendous courage, interest and belief in what one thinks. This I have with the blessing of God. Therefore, why should I not serve my fellow men humbly and help them meet their needs? 
​Asfaw, 1972

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Asfaw, 2017

 recipient of the "World Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child" 

Asfaw Yemiru  received The World's Childrens Prize in 2001 because he had spent over 50 years, since he was 14, devoting all of his time and energy to fighting for the rights of the most deprived children.

asfaw's story

As told by Andrew Shanks, an early '70's volunteer teacher:

"His father was Coptic Orthodox priest. Much of Asfaw's early childhood was spent minding his father's sheep and goats. But when he was eight years old the whole family made the trek to Addis Ababa, for Asfaw and his eleven brothers to be ordained deacon. Having on this occasion seen the capital, he immediately resolved to return. And the next year, with fifty cents in his pocket, he made his own way back. He became one of the streetchildren, for fourteen months sleeping out in a churchyard. One day, though, he had his lucky break. A cartload of cheese had tipped over in the street, and he ran to help rescue the spilt load. It belonged to (I think) an Armenian woman, who as it happened was looking for additional domestic help at the time. There and then, she offered him a place in her household, and entered him in a school. There he did brilliantly well. Eventually he won himself a free scholarship place at the elite General Wingate Boarding School, run by the British Council."

"In fact, it was during his first year there.  At the age of 14, he immediately became something of a student leader. Remembering his own previous experience as a street-child, his first initiative was to arrange a system for the scraps left over at the end of meals at the General Wingate no longer to be thrown away, as before, but to be distributed amongst the street-children outside the gate. And then he started to gather together some of the beneficiaries of this feeding programme, under an oak tree in the local Paulos Petros churchyard, to teach them. 

Teaching in the church yard, 1960's

The church yard today

Soon, he became altogether immersed in this school that he had created. So much so that, when he completed his own studies, he decided not to take up the university place that awaited him, but to dedicate his whole life, from then onwards, to working as a teacher instead. After four years he had, at times, over eight hundred pupils gathered there under the trees in the churchyard. Many of them also slept at night under the eaves of the church, or in the little monumental structures over some of the graves. The church authorities were uneasy about this - clearly, now he needed buildings and land."

"One day, the Emperor Haile Selassie came on a visit to the General Wingate School. This gave Asfaw his chance. Breaking free from the crowd, he threw himself in front of the Emperor's limousine, to petition for assistance. And it worked. By imperial decree, he was awarded three hundred square meters at the back of the churchyard."
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Praise for Asfaw

​I am happy to hear that the fire is still ‘burning bright’ in Asfaw. Oh, let it burn! He is an amazing character – the pride of Wingate, the unsung hero of Ethiopia. We used to volunteer to help out teaching children at his school. Not many of us would have thought  that the school he built over the wall would last, not to mention grow. Unlike many of us, however, Asfaw did not “despise the days of small beginnings”. He is worthy of praise and admiration for his perseverance.  Of course, he was duly recognised and decorated  by the Emperor. He once told me that caught in the hectic business of daily life elsewhere, he found upon arrival at his school site that the Emperor was already there for a surprise visit. Asfaw was drowned in shame and self-flagellation for daring not to have been there at the spot dressed in proper attire to welcome his most august visitor. The response he got from the Emperor at the end of his visit was not stern, but fatherly and kingly – “If only Ethiopia had many more sons like you…” But the years after the Emperor appear to have been striving in the wilderness for Asfaw. Thank God he has survived with the will to live on.  He is an epitome of a survivor, where survival by itself is an achievement, as it has been in Ethiopia over the last few decades.
Girma Zewdie (August 2019)

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All images copyright of Asra Hawariat School Fund