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Abebech Gobena more famously known as "Africa's Mother Theresa," is the founder of Ethiopia's oldest orphanage. She was born in a small rural village called Shebel in 1938.

She was only a month-old when her father was killed during the Ethio-Italian war, so she was raised by her grandparents until the age of nine. (2/9)

She then was married at the age of 10 without her consent per the tradition of her community, but revolting against her marriage, she ran away from home to Addis Ababa where she scraped a basic education, gained a job as a quality controller and remarried. (3/9)

Abebech, a devout Christian, was on a pilgrimage to a holy site in the north-east region of the country when she came across the dead mother and her baby, lying amid a sea of people who were starving to death. (3

The sight of a baby girl suckling on the breast of her dead mother changed the course of Abebech Gobena's life forever. The year was 1980 and Ethiopia lay in the grip of what would become one of the most devastating famines in its history. (4/9)

By the end of 1980, Gobena had taken in 21 children. But her desire to save the young children caused friction in her family. (5

Her husband gave her an ultimatum of choosing between the children or their life together, while relatives suggested that she seeks mental-health care and assumed she has gone mad. (5/9)

As she was no longer welcome at home, she decided to move to a land she had bought with the intention of raising some chicken along with the kids she adopted. (6/9)

Today, Abebech Gobena Children's Care and Development Association (AGOHELMA), the association she founded and a cause she supported over thirty years, provides various services in addition to the orphanage itself, including formal and non-formal education,.. (7/9)

HIV/AIDS prevention activities, habitat improvement and infrastructure development, empowerment of women, among others. Additionally, it provides institutional care for 150 orphans. (8/9)

Since its establishment, over 12,000 needy children have been supported by the association with over 1.5 million people having benefited either directly or indirectly from the association in different regions of the country. (9/9)

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