About PIE and our partners, VBF and Rose Charities Canada

Partners in Ethiopia (PIE) is a volunteer group of Canadian volunteers working to improve education, community health and maternal health services in the Agarfa area with the volunteers of our Ethiopian partner Vision for Bright Future (VBF). We are a secular charitable organization with key people from the now defunct Partners in the Horn of Africa (PiHA) who want to continue the legacy of John Baigent's model for development aid. Like PiHA, our Canadian volunteers are primarily based in Enderby, BC.

Mulualem Mekonnen (VBF Executive Director), Mekonen Bayssie, Ephrem Alemu (VBF key volunteer) and Woinshet Bayssie meeting in Agarfa in April 2022

Rose Charities Canada (rosecharities.ca) is a volunteer-run charitable organization based in Vancouver, BC that aims to combat poverty and injustice worldwide. To reach these goals, their mission is to create a global network of projects with a focus on knowledge sharing and continual improvement. 

Partners in Ethiopia is proud to operate as a project of Rose Charities Canada whom we entrust to accept donations on our behalf, issue tax receipts and support us administratively very efficiently. Thus 95+% of your donation goes to the direct project costs in Ethiopia.

Rose Charities Canada is a Registered Canadian Charity run by volunteers.  They have no paid staff and work from their homes so their operating costs are very low.  The roughly 21 projects of Rose Charities Canada work in developing countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Caribbean.  They work with local communities and listen to local leaders to help them find solutions to their local issues of poverty, thus each project is different.  Rose Charities Canada has been operating for more than two decades and is part of an umbrella group, Rose Charities International (rosecharities.org) also based in Vancouver and administered by the same volunteers.

To give you an idea of the scope of our work as a project team, we file annual reports with Rose Charities Canada:
• Annual Report 2022-2023

Vision for Bright Future (VBF) is an indigenous, volunteer run, non-governmental, not-for-profit, non-sectarian, humanitarian aid, non-governmental organization operating in the Oromia regional state including the Agarfa woreda (district) in the Bale zone and in Addis Ababa city, and it is based in Addis Ababa.  VBF's main intervention areas are on Health, Education, Gender Equality, and the Environment.

VBF was established on October 28, 2011 by a group of dedicated persons from diverse social, economic, professional and religious backgrounds. VBF has been re-registered and licensed by the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice, Charities and Societies Agency, on November 30, 2018 as an Ethiopian Residents charity.

Our Partners in Ethiopia Committee

Laura Jameson - Chairperson

Laura has worked much of her career in social services and community development including extensive experience in First Nations Health with FNs of the Secwepemc Nation. In addition, Laura has operated her own businesses: an employment training business and most recently health consulting. Laura is also a teacher and facilitator, instructing in Early Childhood Development programs and supporting non-profits with planning and capacity development.

Over the past decades Laura has been a volunteer with a variety of organizations including the North Okanagan Community Futures Corporation, Runaway Moon Theatre, Kingfisher Community Society, Lower Shuswap Stewardship Society, and Partners in Ethiopia.

Laura has lived in the North Okanagan/ Shuswap for most of her life and currently lives in the rural Enderby community of Kingfisher. In addition to Partners in Ethiopia, Laura is actively engaged in truth and reconciliation activities and is a Board member of her local community association.

Mekonen Bayssie, Ph.D.

Mekonen joined the Partners in Ethiopia Committee in June 2022. He was one of two founding members of Partners in the Horn of Africa in 2001, where he served as board member for 22 years until Partners in the Horn officially dissolved in June of 2022.

Like his sister Woinshet, Mekonen was born in Agarfa, but left as a young man, ultimately to receive his undergrad degree from Memorial University in St. John's NL.

Mekonen now works for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a Materials Scientist. Mekonen is active with the community and helping other non-profit organizations involved with developmental work in Africa and the USA. Mekonen was Assistant Professor of Physics in Tennessee State University. Mekonen worked as Technology Development Physicist for National Recovery Technologies, where he was responsible for characterizing materials for high-speed material inspection in Nashville, TN. Mekonen lives in Rockville, MD with his wife and three children.

Woinshet Bayssie - Founder

Woinshet was born and grew up in rural Ethiopia, near the town of Agarfa. She grew up in a large family, contributing to family wellbeing as a little shepherd girl herding her family’s livestock. Woinshet attended primary school in her own village, then for Grades 7-12 she walked to Agarfa school, a walk that during rainy season took 3 or 4 times longer in order to access the only bridge available. There were many hardships during that stage of her life including witnessing her good friend being washed away in flash flood waters. After high school, Woinshet moved to the capital city of Addis Ababa where she took vocational training and subsequently volunteered as a typist at the Ministry of Agriculture in Agarfa, and was also farming at that time.

Woinshet’s loving siblings supported her so she could attend nursing school in Addis. After graduation, Woinshet worked for a non profit organization as an emergency room nurse. Soon after, Woinshet became more involved with Partners in the Horn of Africa, traveling to remote communities and acting as a translator and community organizer. During this time, Woinshet met Partners founder Canadian John Baigent, whom she eventually married.
(cont'd)

Woinshet Bayssie (cont'd)

Woinshet moved to rural Enderby BC, Canada with John in 2008 and worked to continue the work of Partners in the Horn of Africa. She also attended UBCO and upgraded her Nursing accreditation. She continued her regular trips to Ethiopia, strengthening her desire to work for change in the lives of less fortunate people. Woinshet has maintained strong connections with Agarfa and other communities in Ethiopia. She understands how even small financial and emotional support can empower someone to succeed to the best of her/his ability.

After John passed in 2016, Woinshet attended Okanagan College studying their Human Service Work program while also working with the Recreation Therapy Team at Heron Grove Assisted Living for Seniors. She continues to reside in Enderby on the farm with her now 17 year-old daughter Tigist and her new partner Keith Cowan who she recently married.

Woinshet shares her kindness, caring, passion, and energy with her Canadian community and continues to reach out to Agarfa to support efforts there to improve the quality of life in that community. She is thrilled to have built a volunteer team to reimagine the Partners in Horn of Africa model and has worked diligently to build partnerships with Rose Charities Canada and Vision For Bright Future to once again support more significant development in Agarfa.

George Jameson

George has nearly 40 years of experience working directly with marginalized people and families in one-on-one and small group settings. He has 29 years in alternate education, has supervised group homes and day centres, and has worked with children from 5 to grandmas of 75 all who were dealing with issues of poverty, addiction, cognitive challenges, and mental illness. He is a huge believer in community and in the power of small groups working together to effect great change. He believes that compassion is a relationship between equals, walking side by side, and not between a healer and the wounded.

George lives in Kingfisher, a small, vibrant, rural community near Enderby where he has been involved as a community director and an organizer and a volunteer in a variety of community committees and activities.

He is excited and feels privileged to be part of Partners in Ethiopia, making connections, making a difference.

Harry Verlaan

Harry is a semi-retired, dedicated and thorough Professional Engineer under the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, who has over 40 years of experience in all aspects of the upstream oil and gas industry. Having extensive knowledge of the technical, operational, financial, economics, planning, land, and regulatory functions with both large and small energy companies, he managed projects from the initial planning and drilling phase, through the facility and pipeline construction phases, and finally the ongoing production operations.

Born and raised on a farm in southwestern Ontario, Harry attended University of Waterloo for his Mechanical Engineering degree and Western for his MBA.

Harry is currently a part time employee, as VP Operations, of Duvalta Energy Corp., a small private Calgary based oil and gas company. He also has direct hands on experience in building construction, having fully renovated two homes in Alberta, and managed the building of two new homes on a rural Enderby, BC property that began as raw land, where he raised his family and still lives with his wife Shelley.

We are very pleased to have Harry on board to share all of his talents and enthusiasm.

Dave Crozier

Dave is a software engineer (retired in theory) who grew up in North Bay, ON and had the good fortune to find and graduate from the unique Computer Engineering & Management program at McMaster University. After five formative and inspiring years at Geac Computer Corp., he caught the entrepreneurial bug and helped start Trimax Retail Systems (which became Triversity Inc) which ended up with 250 employees serving hundreds of retail chains. Triversity was sold to SAP Software (still the largest non-American software company in the world) in 2005.

Dave moved to Enderby in 2004 and had a fortuitous meeting with John Baigent shortly after arriving. Dave caught John's enthusiasm for compassionate, effective aid and quickly became the technical concierge, hardware/software donor and newsletter/online engagement editor-coordinator for Partners in the Horn of Africa from that point forward.

He is thrilled to be part of the Partners in Ethiopia team fulfilling much the same role as for PiHA, because John's passion for making a difference lives on in Woinshet and who can say no to such passion and a compelling mission!

Dave feel blessed to live in the North Okanagan surrounded by some really cool friends here and afar, volunteers his skills to other non-profits including Enderby's own Runaway Moon Theatre and has an avid passion for continuing to study & develop his mindfulness practice.

Our Partners in Ethiopia (PIE) Committee functions like a Board of Directors, but because Rose Charities Canada serves as our legal and financial oversight, we are officially a Committee. We work with Visions For Bright Future and the community stakeholders in Ethiopia to choose and manage projects. We set strategy, budget, fundraise and promote our projects online and with events and building relationships with altruistic community groups.