Ending Poverty in Ethiopia

A Glimmer of Hope is a compassionate social enterprise making a sustainable difference in the lives of some of the poorest people in the world.
Since 2000, A Glimmer of Hope has helped more than two million people improve their quality of life.

The foundation believes justice, equality and dignity are everyone’s birthright and where you are born should not determine whether you live or die.
A Glimmer of Hope has developed an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to Humanitarian Aid and Development. It starts at the village level as we listen to community leaders about what they need.
Then, using a bottom up instead of a top down approach, we work with those communities to develop a plan and identify projects that truly reflect the true necessities of those communities.
Only if the people of these communities are engaged in solving their own issues can the solutions be sustainable. This applies during each of a project’s construction phases but especially after completion when management and maintenance play such an important role in their success.
That success is measured in terms of accountability, transparency and performance with photographs, videos, GPS coordinates and inspections by our Addis Ababa-based team all playing an important role in this process.
A Glimmer of Hope supports programs in these areas: Water and Sanitation; Education; Health Care; Income Creation; Micro-Finance; Micro-Irrigation; and, Veterinary Clinics.

Our Story
A Glimmer of Hope exists today because International Aid can and must be delivered efficiently and effectively.
It is different from traditional charities because it believes it can help bring about an end to extreme poverty in rural Ethiopia during our lifetimes. Everything it does is geared towards that goal.
Our approach has drawn significant support from other results-oriented philanthropists like Scott Harrison of charity:water, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Whole Planet Foundation and Matt Damon’s H2O Africa among others.
Harrison’s charity:water has funded 1,247 water projects in 14 developing nations around the world – including 10 in Africa – in just two years. He provides an unprecedented level of transparency to his supporters about how he uses their donations and it’s no accident that he chose A Glimmer of Hope as his implementing partner for his biggest fundraising campaign of 2008 – the September Campaign – which raised over $1 million for water projects in Ethiopia.
A Glimmer of Hope’s model has also received a ringing endorsement from an expert in the traditional model of international aid. Ambassador Tibor Nagy spent over 23 years in the US Foreign Service in Africa serving twice as Ambassador and three times as Deputy Ambassador.
In an article in the May 2004 edition of the Foreign Service Journal, Ambassador Nagy said A Glimmer of Hope’s approach was resulting in “dramatic positive outcomes.” In the article, he suggested: “we [the US government] should partner more with innovative emerging NGOs, such as A Glimmer of Hope.”
In the five years since Ambassador Nagy wrote the piece, we at A Glimmer of Hope have witnessed the astonishing rate at which true development can happen when it is done well. In Dembi Dollo, the isolated village where we began our work in 2001, funding requests for clean water, basic health care and primary education are giving way to ones for a teachers’ training college, a university, a job training center and loans for small and medium-sized businesses.
Less than a decade ago, Dembi Dollo was paralyzed by grinding poverty. Today, the community’s leading concern is what their children are going to do for a living after they graduate from high school.

Aid is not dead if it is done right. The traditional approaches need to be examined with a critical, creative and constructive mind as well as a compassionate heart. The setbacks, disappointments and shortcomings of aid and development need to be understood and then challenged and solved.

100% Promise
The greatest complaint with overseas aid is that so little of it reaches the people in need. At times, less than half of a donor's dollars reaches the target communities with the remainder being gobbled up by administrative fees and fundraising costs.
We believe that's unacceptable - 100% of donor money needs to get to the projects - and that's what we offer here at A Glimmer of Hope.
Because we pay all of our operating expenses through our endowment, we are able to offer you a unique opportunity to help some of the poorest people in the world, one that sees every dollar you donate get to where it is needed.
Your donation will go directly to our country office in Addis Ababa which is staffed by experienced Ethiopian professionals who monitor the progress of our projects. That office also sees to it that your dollar is stretched as far as it will go once it reaches Ethiopia because of the familiarity they have with doing business in the country.
It's an innovative and secure channel of distribution that ensures that your contribution reaches the people in need and does something significant when it gets there.