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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More Articles on Asfaw

World Children's Prize winner
New Internationalist article
Tierra Del Hombres Foundation winner

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)

ASFAW'S PASSING 

Death of the Ethiopian who educated 120,000 children in the slums of Addis Ababa.
Asfaw Yemiru, ‘Friend of the Poor’, is mourned by thousands in the Ethiopian capital.

Asfaw Yemiru, founder of the Asra Hawariat School, died on May 8, 2021. This is a school which, for the past 60 years, has offered a high quality and totally free education to thousands of the poorest children in Addis Ababa.

As a young street-urchin newly arrived from the countryside, Asfaw was mooching around outside St.George’s Cathedral when a barrow of oranges belonging to a Turkish lady tipped and shed its load. Quick off the mark, he scurried about, picking up the fruit for its thankful owner, who then took him into her household as a general dogsbody for the next few years.

From being a street kid and a domestic drudge, he progressed fast. His ‘employer’ let him go to school, and in 2 years he completed the first 8 years of the Ethiopian education system, with results that gained him a scholarship to the élite General Wingate School, then run by the British Council. It had been some journey for the priest’s son from the remote region of Bulga, near Ankober, on the escarpment to the north of Addis.

But he was restless with privilege, and soon he was gathering his fellow street kids under a churchyard tree to teach them what he had learned that day. He gathered up the left-overs from his school meals and took them to the school gates. And when the Emperor, Haile Selassie, visited the school he darted out in front of the imperial motorcade and persuaded His Imperial Majesty to grant him some land on which to build a school – a school that would always be free for those who otherwise would never have had the opportunity.

In the early days classrooms were built by the kids themselves, using whatever was to hand – eucalyptus wood from the trees they had cleared, broken bricks from a local brick factory. The earliest classrooms had shelves which were used as bunks by the ‘orphans’, until dormitories could be built. And finally, in the 1990’s, the orphanage was closed and all such children placed with local foster families who could give them a home, a street, a neighbourhood – normality. He offered education, hope and a future, and they grasped it with open arms.  Not many years later New Internationalist described him as ‘one of the most remarkable men in Africa today’, a man of determination and vision who changed the lives of tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen for the better.
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Now, almost 60 years later, the Asra (sometimes Asere) Hawariat (Footsteps of the Apostles) School is still going strong and will carry on its founder’s vision. Since its foundation, the school, now on two campuses, has educated over 120,000 children. It has been through tough times, navigating the collapse of the imperial régime, the Red Terror, Stalinist dictatorship and civil war, at the end of which the school compound became a field hospital for war-wounded and a transit camp for demobbed soldiers.

Asfaw was never content to rest on his laurels and just plod on. Numerous experiments were tried, some successful and some not. During Covid and lockdown he worked with parents on an imaginative way of carrying on their children’s education where home-computers were non-existent.  Today, amongst the sports and pop stars, politicians and other heroes, many taxis in Addis Ababa have pictures of Asfaw prominently displayed. Since his 20’s he was Gashe (a term of respect, loosely translated as ‘my protector’) to many Ethiopians.

During his lifetime Asfaw achieved much and was recognized internationally. In 2001 he was awarded The World Children’s’ Prize for the Rights of the Child; and given an award for his humanitarian contributions from the La Coruña branch of Tierra de Hombres in Spain 2003. But most important was the recognition he gained amongst his own people. As one of his former pupils wrote on Facebook recently: He saw talent, he saw hope, he saw a future. He believed in his students so much, we began to believe in ourselves since starting education at the Asere Hawariat. We credit Gash Asfaw Yemiru who gave his entire life to change our precarious living situation. Long Live to Our Precious Father!!!!
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Timothy Kinahan

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Asfaw Yemiru 
c. 1941-2021

Thousands of Ethiopians flooded the streets on May 10 to mourn Asfaw's passing.  Find a gallery of photos and video at:
Photos
Videos

​Find many moving tributes from Asfaw's former students and teachers on the Facebook page run by the school administrators. Different spelling, same amazing school.
www.facebook.com/Aserehawariyat-Primery-School-138440396190199 

Read Asfaw's obituaries published in international publications.
The Times
The Daily Telegraph
​The Economist
The Week magazine
The Belfast Telegraph

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All images copyright of Asra Hawariat School Fund