Menelik Hall Foundation, Inc.

In 1986 our group of Ethiopians and Friends of Ethiopia began holding Ethiopian buffet dinners with slide shows on different aspects of Ethiopian lore and events, raising money for Ethiopian students whom we sponsored. These dinners were held in a third floor ‘hall’ in the building on Cleveland’s near east side where Dr. Carl Robson’s medical practice and the student apartments were located. Because of the history of Ethiopia’s Emperor Menelik having held regular feasts for thousands of his subjects in a large building known as Menelik Adarash (Menelik Hall), in this spirit we began calling our space ‘Menelik Hall’. Soon we decided to form a charitable corporation to promote education, cultural development and exchange, health and medical care, socially responsible commercial development, and humanitarian and environmental programs. Continuing in the magnanimous spirit of Emperor Menelik, we named it ‘Menelik Hall Foundation’.

This is a charitable 501 (c) (3) organization, incorporated in 1987 in the State of Ohio, and dedicated to support projects primarily for, but not limited to, Ethiopia and Ethiopians. In addition to our Ethiopian students, we have supported Ethiopian refugees, housed 16 of the Lost Boys of Sudan, and assisted Ethiopians with basic immigration and school issues. We shipped books to Menelik High School in Addis Ababa and basic science texts to an entire medical class at Addis Ababa University, supported an attempt to development a Community Medicine Residency at AAU Medical School, contributed to an HIV transmission-prevention program for newborns, fostered the start-up of an on-going school support program for the Gore, Ethiopia High School, fostered the start-up of St Mary Ethiopian Orthodox Church here in Cleveland, sponsored and organized a sister-city connection between Cleveland and Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, on Lake Tana (birthplace of the Blue Nile River) with a signing ceremony at Empress Taytu Restaurant by Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell and Mayor Mareye Kefyalew in 2004.

A current major focus is the Ethiopian Cultural Garden project in three phases here in Cleveland’s unique Cultural Gardens Park (Rockefeller Park). Phase One of this big project– a large mosaic mural of Ethiopian history – is now almost completed; it is the only such monument to Ethiopia outside of the country itself. We have raised enough of the funding to cover much of Phase 1 of this project, but about $24,000 more is needed to fully complete Phase One obligations; then to progress to Phases Two and Three, about $250,000 more is needed.

In the meantime, other projects appear and will continue to be addressed, such as our recent sponsorship of Kibret Abebe to Cleveland Global’s Sister-City conference. Kibret, a Nurse-Anesthetist, is the developer of Tebita Ambulance Co. in Addis Ababa and has an associated paramedic training program. In support of Paramedic Training and Emergency Medical Services, of great importance and need in Ethiopia, we facilitated successful connections between Kibret’s program in Addis Ababa and the Cleveland and Hudson EMS programs; the Hudson Paramedic Program donated full training-course educational materials. As an important corollary, we now also have an agenda to facilitate development of a paramedic training course in our Sister City – at Bahir Dar University, planned to be expanded to the entire Regional State.