JeCCDO Chief Executive Mulugeta Gebru (right) with the Mayor of Bahir Dar

About JeCCDO

The Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organisation ( JeCCDO) was established in 1985 in response to the growing number of orphan and vulnerable children in the wake of the famine and civil war.

Then called the Jerusalem Association Children’s Homes it set up and ran orphanages. Children were very well cared for in a loving environment and provided with educational opportunities.

By the 1990s the children were growing up and the economic and political situation in Ethiopia was becoming more 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 to enable local people to facilitate their own projects to promote the welfare of their orphan and vulnerable children. JeCCDO’s 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 they live. Read more about this.

JeCCDO now has Community Programme Development Offices in five areas in Ethiopia. You can read more about these by clicking on the towns marked on the map on our Home page.