ESFNA Announces 2014 Scholarship Winners
ESFNA congratulates Hanan, Emnet, and Yared for winning the 2014 scholarship!
On behalf of the ESFNA Board and the Executive Committee, we would like to extend our congratulations to this year’s winners!
Emnet Shibre
Emnet is a sophomore at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. She is majoring in political science. Her career goal is to become a lawyer. Her ultimate dream is to go back to Ethiopia and give back to the people that mean so much to her.
Hanan Awel
Hanan is a junior Public Policy and Global Health double major at Duke University. She sees herself using her health policy education to become a global citizen. Her main interest lies in humanitarian work, with an emphasis on social justice/human rights issues, women’s health, and global development.
Yared Worku
Yared is a junior at University of California, Riverside. He is majoring in Business Administration. Upon graduation, he plans to get his masters in Health Administration in order to oversee better healthcare standards in the American society. He also dreams of going back to Ethiopia to continue this work in the future.
The ESFNA Scholarship Program provides financial support to outstanding students of Ethiopian origin who are currently pursuing higher education in an accredited institution. The award is based on the applicants’ academic achievements and their response to essay question related to Ethiopia and Ethiopian values.
This year, the ESFNA Scholarship Committee selected the submission by Emnet Shibre, an essay on the effects of protests by the diaspora following the brutal treatment of Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East, as the best essay of the ESFNA 2014 Scholarship Contest. Emnet wrote:
“…it is crucial that we as Ethiopians recognize that poverty in and of itself is a massive human rights violation. It was poverty that sent our fellow Ethiopians to places like Saudi Arabia in the first place, and it is poverty that will keep them returning to places where they may be abused if they believe cannot find jobs in Ethiopia. … Ethiopians have already demonstrated to the world that they will not sit silently as their fellow countrymen are abused, and it is important that the diaspora now focuses on strengthening its network. The more we network and communicate with one another, the more solutions we can find to help improve financial and social conditions in Ethiopia, thereby preventing similar situations from occurring in the future.”
Click here to read Emnet’s submission in its entirety (PDF).
