Seven coffee beans: A story about the formation of local self-help association in Ambo, Ethiopia: A personal account. Is this regarded as an asset-based community development (ABCD)?

This is a story of the emergence of a self-help association in a small town in Ethiopia; with the help of a catalyst who has been leading the community by stepping back to make use of their own unrecognized resource as a springboard for their community development.

In a small town called Ambo, which is located at 114 KM. South West of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, about fifty poor neighborhood community members most of them women; with little or no formal education held a meeting with the local NGO program coordinator, (the catalyst), to discuss about their childrens education. This local NGO was the sponsor of their childrens education. The NGO supported the neighborhood children by giving them school uniforms and financial support for educational materials. The beneficiary children were selected because their parents were not able to support their education. Most of these residents in attendance of this meeting were single parents and widows who are vulnerable and living in a precarious situation. The majority of them were taking part in the meeting with huge expectation that the NGO would provide them assistance of any kind on top of their childrens education sometime in the future. As usual, after some discussion and reflection about the educational progress of their children; it was a customary practice to raise issues that concerns their life to converse with the NGO program coordinator.

The most persistent agenda in almost all their previous meetings was to acquire aid money from the agency to feed their children. Nevertheless, the catalyst was looking for an alternative approach to community development and didnt support the idea of providing money, even if it was available, for different reasons; but mainly for fear of lack of continuation of the support once the project terminated and with a firm believe that aid and charity will only make the community members dependent and incapable. The catalyst suggested an alternative idea to the women; sayingIf you want support from the agency you need to save a small amount of your own seed money to show your commitment for change and true community development. .what if you can save ten Birr per month which is equivalent to half US dollar? He added, If you do that you will be going to form a self-help association where my organization will support on your effort afterwards. Butthe idea of saving money suggested by the catalyst seems offensive and unacceptable for these poor women because they believe as their situation would not allow them to do that. One of the women said:

We barely eat one meal a day and how come you ask us to save money? This must be a joke! We want our children to support us by working than staying all day long in school. We dont want to see them to go to school any more if you wish.

There was a lot of havoc on that day and the meeting was adjourned with dismay. After a month, in the subsequent meeting the catalyst brought the idea of saving and forming a self-help association again to the community. This time he was prepared to challenge their belief-system. He asked about their coffee drinking routine.

In Ethiopia, coffee is being prepared for drinking from the coffee beans roasted and crushed in to a powder at home. Regardless of the socio economic status of a family, coffee is served at-least once a day in every household. The most customary practice, however, is three times a day along with a meal course. The catalyst asked as how many times they drink a coffee within a day. All of them asserted as coffee is being served in their home at least once¹ in a day. The coffee beans are bought with three Ethiopian Birr from a neighborhood store in a small glass for one coffee ritual (serve).

The catalyst asked the women to save seven coffee beans from their daily coffee consumption for the subsequent six days. At the seventh day he asked them to use the collected coffee beans over the past six days and save the three Birr they were supposed to expend it to buy a coffee for that day. In the meeting he also brought the coffee beans and demonstrated what he was talking about for clarification. Most of the women found the idea acceptable and agreed as it would be simple to materialize the proposal. That day, the meeting ended up to be successful and more than 25 residents decided and pledge to save the seven coffee beans and eventually agreed to save the 10 Birr per month and the intentional community association (ICA) called Abdi Boru in Afan-Oromo (Oromo language), meaning hope of tomorrow was established with the objective of helping to help each other. On top of their effort and as an outside leverage the local NGO supported them with four mill apparatus to increase their income. The town administration gave them a land for establishing the mill in the center of their neighborhood. Recently the community has been able to diversify their business: They have started working on vegetable farming and running a cafeteria and a rental shop service. The self-help association is currently managed by the elected board members from the community.

The seven coffee beans story awakened the members of the community as they are capable of changing their situation by their own. Since its establishment three years ago many poor residents were attracted to the association to make the total registered members about 128. As a result of the establishment of the association, in addition to the more powerful sense of accomplishment for establishing this emerging community association which is self-fulfilling per se; the community is so empowered to initiate adult literacy programs for themselves. As a result few got employment opportunity in the mill service in different capacities ( as a cashier, a guard, and a scale operator) while the majorities were entitled to a reasonable loan without any collateral requirement to start and/or expand their home and street based businesses, and others are soon expecting a dividend from their own enterprise.

¹In Ethiopia coffee ceremony is considered as one of the social event that brings neighbors/or family friends together. In most affluent households coffee has been served a minimum of three times a day. By tradition, low-income residents could take turn with neighbors of their choice in serving coffee to one another to meet their coffee consumption requirements and/or for socialization. For instance if three families live close to one another; one of the family will take the morning turn and the others will take the noon and the night session to serve coffee to one another respectively. It is also possible for a family to have more than one coffee group as well. In doing so, each family member will probably have three coffee servings a day. Though, men can take part in the initial decisions as to whom the family should relate for coffee event; the coffee ritual is usually regarded as womens responsibility to socialize with neighbors. For Ethiopians, coffee ceremony is regarded as one of the most important social events in building sense of community in the neighborhood.