About SMCF | Funding Partners | Accounts 2005

Our Partnership

	A former JeCCDO children's home in Debre Zeit

St Matthew's Children's Fund Ethiopia (SMCF) and The Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organisation (JeCCDO) are autonomous organisations who have worked together since 1987. SMCF has Christian roots and it values the support of fundraising church groups.

It is not missionary in its approach and it supports the most disadvantaged children regardless of race or religion. SMCF is JeCCDO's most long-standing and regular partner. It has always been considered important that we remain independent of each other, so that we can both make autonomous decisions, and in particular so that SMCF would not impose its opinions on JeCCDO or stifle its growth. We are in continual dialogue, a member of SMCF visits JeCCDO at least twice a year to monitor and report back on JeCCDO projects. Both organisations are mutually accountable to each other and have a clear understanding of each other's roles as stated in our Memorandum of Understanding, a partnership document co-written and signed by both partners.

The SMCF/JeCCDO partnership was established in direct response to the large number of children abandoned in the wake of the terrible famine and civil war in the mid 1980s. Given the huge numbers of orphans or children separated from their families the best means of saving their lives was to care for them in children's homes.

By the 1990s the children were growing up and the economic and political situation in Ethiopia was becoming stable. So in 1996 JeCCDO launched a programme to reunify the younger children with their extended families and to reintegrate the older children into the community through training them and giving them the resources to start their chosen business or career.   

JeCCDO was amongst the first organisations in Ethiopia to launch a new type of approach: Integrated Community Development Projects. These are designed to work within a particular community to enable local people to facilitate their own projects to promote the welfare of their children. Our aim is for local community organisations to become independent associations to allow local people to have direct input and control over development activities in the area where they live.