{"id":273802,"date":"2019-04-23T04:35:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T08:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?guid=c0156a74ab76f6681d3d15968b43017f"},"modified":"2026-09-13T11:22:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T15:22:41","slug":"abebech-gobena-founder-of-ethiopias-oldest-modern-orphanage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/273802","title":{"rendered":"Abebech Gobena, founder of Ethiopia\u2019s oldest modern orphanage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The African Exponent profiled <strong>Abebech Gobena<\/strong>, often called \u201cAfrica\u2019s Mother Teresa,\u201d who built Ethiopia\u2019s oldest modern orphanage after decades of taking in children others rejected.<\/p>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"780\" width=\"780\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-349879\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/school-children.jpg?fit=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Abebech Gobena, founder of Ethiopia\u2019s oldest modern orphanage\" \/>\n<p>Her story runs through famine years, social stigma, and a stubborn insistence that abandoned children were a public obligation, not a private shame. Family rejection and personal sacrifice sit beside institutional founding in the telling.<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopian charity histories are often flattened into NGO English. Gobena\u2019s work is local, older than many donor cycles, and tied to how society treats girls, orphans, and disability.<\/p>\n<p>Keeping the profile in the archive honors a civil-society thread that outlasts cabinets. Care infrastructure is politics too, especially when the Ethiopian government later claimed modernization while social safety nets frayed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africanexponent.com\/post\/10091-gobena-has-been-raising-children-in-ethiopia-for-more-than-three-decades\">The African Exponent<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet Abebech Gobena, &#8220;Africa\u2019s Mother Theresa&#8221;, Founder of Ethiopia&#8217;s Oldest Orphanage&nbsp;&nbsp;The African ExponentThis woman has made sacrifices, rejected by family and gone the extra mile to support Ethiopia&#8217;s marginalised society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":349879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/school-children.jpg?fit=259%2C194&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-19ea","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601055,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273802\/revisions\/601055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}