Rockefeller Park, a beautiful riverine stretch of land for almost 3 miles from Lake Erie to Case-Western Reserve University, was given by Rockefeller to the City of Cleveland in 1897. Within this park, garden plots for various immigrant communities have been developed, starting with the Shakepeare Garden (now ‘British Garden’) in 1916. For over 100 years since then the Cleveland, Ohio, Cultural Gardens Park – unique in the world – has been adding more countries. Cleveland’s Ethiopian Community, with Menelik Hall Foundation as a required organizational sponsor, was approved for a garden site by Cleveland Cultural Garden Foundation in 2013.

As the 37th garden, Ethiopia was the first African nation to be awarded a site, and the Ethiopian Cultural Garden Design Committee with community input has been persistently developing a plan and fund-raising for our garden site. Many options were considered – a large jabena, anbessa, fidel,Tis Abay, statue of Haile-Selassie, Gondar Castle, others. Finally, the choices of the committee were monumental structures representing an Aksum Stele and a Lalibela doorway, and a mosaic wall structure representing Ethiopian heritage, history, diversity, art, globalization and the future of humankind viewed from the land where all human life began.

Project Details

Our Health and Education program has been in operation since the start of Menelik Hall Foundation. 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.

Recently we sponsered Kibret Abebe, Nurse-Anesthetist and developer of Tebita Ambulance Co, to Cleveland Global’s Sister-City conference. Kibret 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.