Hello Friends,
It’s going to be a busy summer for OMO CHILD! We’ve made some tremendous progress regarding the elimination of Mingi in one of the tribes in the Omo Valley. Our Founder, Lale Labuko, has been on the ground in Ethiopia for the past two weeks, working with Kara tribal elders to end Mingi this summer. Kara tribal elders have agreed to Lale’s request after a difficult, four-year-long struggle to convince them. They have agreed to hold a ceremony this July that will officially eliminate the practice. John Rowe, Co-Founder of OMO CHILD, has been invited to this ceremony and will be filming the event, so that we can share this with you all. While we are happy and excited to report this progress, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to eliminate the practice from the valley altogether. There are 45,000 Hamar people that still practice Mingi; our goal is to continue our dialogue this summer with the Hamar tribe. For up-to-date information, please follow us on Facebook and check out our website http://www.omochild.org throughout the summer.