Grace, the Amazing Kind

It's impossible to imagine a life that exists solely because of grace. But for the moms of the students at Fresh and Green Academy, amazing grace is what provides for their existence. Let me explain: these women experience life on a level that few Americans have witnessed, much less have imagined. Poor and uneducated, they came from rural areas of Ethiopia to the "big city" of Addis Ababa, only to find that jobs were nonexistent.

Homeless, they survived street life by selling the only thing they had: themselves. But some of the lucky ones chose to live northeast of the city in the neighborhood called Kotebe. There, one woman, Muday Mitiku took them under her guidance. She provided a free school for their children called Fresh and Green Academy. And she founded a Mothers' Cooperative so that these women could make crafts to sell, have food to eat for themselves and their other children, and have a roof over their heads. And most importantly, by providing the mothers with regular food, she has made them eligible for the life-saving medicine that changes HIV from a lethal into a manageable disease.

And all of this -- the school, the food, the rent, the education is funded by donations. The mothers exist solely on the sale of the crafts they make and donations made by complete strangers. People they will never meet.

Tonight, some strangers stopped by a crafts fair and bought and donated enough money to keep two families off the street for two months. It can only be chalked up to grace. The amazing kind, that is.