The Agarfa Footbridge
Partners' first project in Ethiopia involved the construction of a footbridge near the town of Agarfa in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia. Bale is a wheat growing area in central Ethiopia located approximately 11,000 feet above sea level.

Footbridges are extremely important to the people of rural Ethiopia. Most Ethiopians live in small villages and travel to town by foot. Since all essential services are located in towns, access to them is crucial for medical care, schooling, shopping, and other necessities. During the rainy season the runoff in the steep mountains - and most of Ethiopia is mountainous - changes small streams into impassable rivers. In a society where all essential services are centralized the impact can be staggering. If you are seriously ill during the rainy season, you cannot get treatment. And with no access to local markets there is no way of generating income or buying necessities. Schooling has to be abandoned if you live on the wrong side of the river. Children who try to cross swollen rivers often risk drowning.

Two kilometres outside of Agarfa there is a village of several thousand people which formerly was cut off from the town when the Weyb River became impassable during the rainy season. Partners decided to make a footbridge over the river its first project in Ethiopia. Partners entered into an arrangement with a local village group called Agarfa Self-Help Organization or "ASHO". ASHO agreed to contribute the local materials which would be required in the construction of the footbridge and to provide all the labour that was required. Partners then contracted with a local Ethiopian construction company to design and build the bridge in sections and transport it to Agarfa. Partners' contract with the construction company provided that on-site labour and local materials were to be provided by ASHO. The labour was significant. 1,000 man days were required because four, six-metre steel sections of footbridge had to be carried and then held in place by men standing on scaffolding while the welders fastened the sections together.

The bridge was constructed on time and on budget and dramatically changed the lives of the villagers who had previously been isolated from services for three months each year. A year after the bridge was completed the real benefit of the project became apparent. At that time ASHO approached Partners with two more projects they wanted to proceed with. One project involved a high school library where the villagers had already raised 50% of the hard costs. The other project was another footbridge across the same river about 10 miles from the first - this one serving 25,000 people. Already local materials had been assembled at the site and bids solicited from two construction companies. ASHO had proceeded with these projects in the hope that another agreement could be reached with Partners but failing that, in the belief that they could make other arrangements if necessary. This, of course, is exactly what international aid should be trying to achieve - empowering people to bring about changes themselves.