Guest Writer - Dan Butera

 Dan Butera is a man that I met during my trip to Ethiopia. He and his wife are the hands and feet of the Lord every day as they care for the people of Ethiopia, specifically the poor women who are forced to earn a living by selling their bodies. Dan impressed me with his obvious passion for Ethiopia right away. He had a wealth of knowledge about the culture and history of the land and yes, he speaks the language. Please read about his story below, as written by him.

I live in Ethiopia. And it isn't weird for me. Though I sometimes wonder if it should be. I grew up in York, Pennsylvania and never moved outside of Pennsylvania until I moved here. Growing up in York, I didn't have any Ethiopian friends and I knew very little about Ethiopia itself. It wasn't something that I really ever thought about until one semester in college when I became friends with another student who just happened to be an Ethiopian. All throughout that semester I thought about Ethiopia and by the end of the semester it was largely dominating my thoughts. It was that following summer that I took my first trip here. I came with Living Word Church in York to work on their village adopting project. Even before I took that trip, I somehow knew that I would someday live in Ethiopia. This was only confirmed to me by the pilot's announcement when we landed in Addis Ababa. He said "For those of you who have a connecting flight, we wish you a safe rest of your journey. And for those of you who are coming home, welcome home." He didn't say anything about those of us who were just there for a trip. This may be a small and trivial thing, but I really felt like I was coming home. I clearly remember stepping out of the airport and the rest of that week. I fell in love with Ethiopia. I had found my home. 

Through the years I continued to come back to Ethiopia. Planning longer and longer trips each time. My love for Ethiopia grew more and more each time. I also fell in love with a woman over here (which made it much easier to make the move!). I met Ruth on my third trip to Ethiopia and we developed our friendship through email and the few times when I would make a trip here. We were married on November 28th, 2009 and couldn't be happier about it. Ruth has been an amazing support to me as I have dealt with all the issues that come with moving to a new country.

I was eager to find some way to help the poor and destitute. Each trip that I took to Ethiopia I stayed with my friend Dr. Frew, who also works with Living Word on their project. He has also worked on another project for a number of years called Operation Love Never Fails (OLNF). Each time I came here I learned more and more about that project and also grew closer with Frew. The OLNF offers a helping hand to women looking to get out of prostitution. The main area where the work is done is one of the worst red light districts in Addis Ababa. The women here live in such dire straits that it is incomprehensible. The get paid an average of fifteen US cents for every customer that comes by, the maximum that they will get paid is about one US dollar (and that is only when a guy decides to spend the night). Many of them have children, who are exposed to their mothers' work as they grow up - in fact, the children will often sleep on the top bunk of the bed while their mother works on the lower bunk. To make it all worse, their landlords charge them extremely high rent. We have heard of some women having to pay as much as three US dollars per day. You can do the math and figure out how many guys they need to be with each day just to pay the rent, let alone buying food and paying bills. Needless to say, these women work twenty-four hours per day and rarely ever get a break.

I had, of course, heard so many stories throughout my life about people who live in poverty and all of the problems that come with that. But I never fully understood what that looked like until I saw this red light district. I could never have imagined that a place with this much despair existed. I knew that this was the project that I wanted to help out with, quite possibly the very reason that I came to Ethiopia in the first place. I started to talk to Frew and figure out how I could best help him and support him. I quickly realized that the immediate need was financial. It is quite difficult to do fund raising in Ethiopia, so I looked to other options (such as raising money in the US). I set up a non-profit organization in the US called Fields of Hope. The sole purpose of this organization is to raise money for the Operation Love Never Fails project. We are nearly two years into this combined effort and have already seen a number of exciting things happen. 

For example, a few months ago we registered around forty children for school. This involved buying them all the necessary school supplies, buying their uniforms and paying their tuition. The coolest thing is that all of these children's mothers were previously working as prostitutes and now have other jobs. Not only that, but these children now have an opportunity in life. Far too often in that red light district the daughters of the women will start to work as prostitutes themselves, sometimes as young as seven years old! It was so amazing to see these children, with big smiles on their faces, standing next to their moms, who had a sense of relief on their faces. The children were wearing their uniforms and were so excited about their new school supplies. That is a moment that I can never forget!

I would really like to see this project expand. Actually, Frew and I have often talked of how amazing it would be if we could one day help every woman in that red light district and then close the place down. Right now, because of financial constraints, we are mainly focusing on helping the women in smaller ways. These ways include finding them some small jobs, providing them micro-loans, getting their children in school and various other ways that we can currently support them. It is our dream, however, to be able to open a number of social businesses with the sole intent of providing these women with fair wages so that they can fully support themselves and their families. One idea is to open a coffee shop/bakery. In Ethiopia, coffee shops are very much a part of the culture and people may even go to coffee shops a few times each day. It would be a very profitable business, which would allow the women to receive very fair salaries. It would also help to boost the confidence of these women, as they would have a well paying job that isn't so destructive as what they did before.

One other thing that I always try to do when I talk to people about Ethiopia is to break the stereotype about this country. Before I came here, I didn't know what to expect. I knew little more about Ethiopia than the famines and poverty. What I have come to learn since moving here is that it is such an amazing country. The nature is vast and incredible. There is a ton of water, in fact a large part of the Nile Basin is in Ethiopia. There are waterfalls and lakes. There are mountains. There are cold areas and hot (in Addis, where I live, the year round temperatures range between 45-90 degrees). It is an amazingly beautiful country right with history. A place definitely worth visiting in your life!

If you are interested in reading more about what we do or to stay up to date with the work that we are doing, please check out our website www.FieldsofHope.net

Thank you for your time,

Dan Butera

Fields of Hope February Newsletter

 The newsletter below of from Dan Butera, who works in Ethiopia with Fields of Hope, an organization that helps prostitutes find new jobs and new lifestyles. It has been published here with Dan Butera's permission, and can be viewed in it's original form here.

I wish I could send some warmth along with this newsletter, I'm sure many of you could use some of the famous Ethiopian sun to warm your day. We're well into the dry season and the sun is starting to get pretty warm during the days, but still not above 85 or 90 degrees. The weather here is very comfortable year round, but in an odd way I actually miss the seasons in Pennsylvania. Though, I guess I should count my blessings to be able to sit here typing this newsletter in shorts and a t-shirt!


We were very happy to see some of our friends a few weeks ago. A team came here from Living Word Church in York, PA (and some from Bethany UMC in Red Lion, even a few people from Romania came along!) to work in a village called Sendafa. I knew a few of the people on the team already and the rest quickly became my friends. Ruth and I were even lucky enough to host two of our friends, Dawn and Rena, for an extra week. It was reat to be able to show them a bit of what it is like to live in Ethiopia. It's not without
frustrations, but it is a pretty great life anyway.

It has been very amazing recently to see the progress that is happening in the project. Many of the ladies that we have set up doing small jobs have really been working hard and have been quite successful. We even helped some of the women open bank accounts so that they can save money each month! There's is always a lot more work to be done, but it is so encouraging to see success stories.

No matter how many times I see the area where we work, it never stops breaking my heart. We just recently drove through some of that area during the day time and again at night. It is an area full of such desperate struggle – it is extremely difficult to comprehend. Seeing that area again really made it clear to me exactly why we are doing this work and just how important it is to help these women.

We are continually coming up with new ways to offer a helping hand to anyone looking to stop working as a prostitute. Our current focus is to set people up doing small jobs. Current examples of this would be giving some of the ladies a small amount of money to buy fruits and vegetables, they then sell these by the side of the road for a profit. They have been doing a good job at it and are on their way to being self sufficient. We are
also looking into options such as butter churning and soap making.

We are also going to continue the current ways that we support these ladies. For some of them, we give them basic supplies (wheat, cooking oil, soap, etc). For others, we pay for everything associated with sending their children to school. Sometimes it means just visiting them in their houses and listening to their stories. Other times it means providing them with medicine. In all cases, our main goal is to show them love, to let them know that people care about them and to give them a new chance in life.

Let me tell you about Haregewoign, one of the women who has been helped by our project. When we found her, she was working as a prostitute in one of the worst areas of the city. She would get paid around 15 US cents per customer that came through her door. Her chances of having HIV are very
high, though we are still waiting for the results to come back. She is a single mother to her seven year old son, Ermias. It is very difficult to raise a child in
those conditions, but she had no other choice. This story could very easily have an extremely sad ending, like so many other stories about ladies who are working as prostitutes in this area. Thankfully
this story does not. Operation Love Never Fails, which is a project of the local nonprofit that we are working with, started helping Haregewoign about a year and a half ago. The biggest thing that we have been able to do for her is to help her and ten other women start a small business, a small trash collecting service.

Since there are no big doortodoor trash collection companies here, most people hire someone to take the trash from their house to the larger central collection areas. So, we helped these ladies by buying them such things as uniforms, gloves, shovels and big wheelbarrows. With these things, they travel around on foot to each of the houses or businesses which have hired them.

Though these women have only been doing this for a year and a half, they are lready self sufficient and no longer require our support. It is such an amazing thing to see someone go from such a difficult like into such a fulfilling life. While she still doesn't have very much, she is completely free from such a despairing life. She is now able to support herself and her family without the need for any additional help. Whenever you see her she has the biggest smile on her face. You can see that she is relieved and proud that she is successful at her new job.

We have also helped her son, Ermias, to get into school. At the start of the school year we bought him his uniform and school supplies and
also paid his tuition. I remember meeting him the day we gave them his school supplies. He seemed so happy and very interested in his new backpack. His mom was also thrilled that day, had a huge smile on her face the whole time and came up to me with that big smile and said “thank you very much”.





To learn more about Fields of Hope or subscribe to the newsletter, please visit their website www.fieldsofhope.net