Six years on from our last meeting, we’ve swapped chatting with Sue Eland in a London coffee shop for a very post-COVID Teams call. Somehow, it feels like no time has passed, and yet also like decades, because so much has happened since we last spoke.

Sue first discovered Wild Frontiers as a traveller. She’s joined several of our tours, but it was Ethiopia that left the deepest mark. After a lifetime in education as a headteacher and Lead School Inspector, she dreamed of leaving a legacy for disadvantaged children in rural Africa.

During her Ethiopia tour in 2015, Sue set out to understand how she might put her experience to use. Travelling with our much-loved Ethiopian guide Dario, Sue saw there were many schools that needed help.

With the help of a partner charity, Together We Learn, Sue went back to Ethiopia and identified four villages where the need for a school was urgent. Unable to decide, she drew up pros and cons in her notebook before finally choosing Gendit, a small rural community in northern Ethiopia.

Educational outcomes in rural areas are typically much lower — attendance, retention, and performance all lag behind urban centres. Gendit offered a unique opportunity: it was well placed to serve surrounding villages, and though its two makeshift classrooms were poorly equipped and attendance was patchy, it showed Sue the community had an early commitment to education. At the time, these temporary classrooms hosted just 24 students and two teachers, which served many surrounding villages.

“My expectations are far too high. I started out intending to build a classroom, which soon turned into ‘I’ll build a school’ — and not just any school, but a model rural elementary school.” 

Working with delivery partners, Together We Learn, Sue and the TWL team began training teachers, the director, local people at a grassroots level and involving the community in providing labour and materials. Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education supported the project by securing land, supplying resources, and funding salaries for trained teachers.

Back in 2015, Sue’s ambitious target was to one day offer primary education to 500 children. Today, ten years on, that vision has become reality.

“I should have said 150 students…capped at 50 a class, because government schools are usually 70 and above. But I said 500 — and here we are at 500.”

Ethiopia’s elementary system covers Grades 1 - 8, for children aged 5 - 14, and Gendit provides a pathway into further education thanks to its proximity to a secondary school and a new university in Gondar.

The Ministry reports:

“It is a model rural school for the whole region: clean uniforms, low drop-out rates, good student behaviour, good outcomes, and the best English teaching.”
 

The money from a generous private donor is enabling the construction of a library, and the next major project will be the addition of a science lab and two more classrooms to complete the school.

This year, through the Wild Frontiers Foundation, we were able to support the school with a donation for teaching materials and teacher training.

Sue has not been able to return to Ethiopia since 2019. First, COVID-19 halted international travel and progress on the ground. Conflict in the region followed and continued until late 2022. In true Wild Frontiers fashion, we sent our founder, Jonny, and Travel Specialist, Clem, to assess the situation. Although conditions briefly looked promising, instability returned, and, like Sue, we have not yet been able to return.

From the UK, Sue continued coordinating the project remotely. By 2024, development resumed. Across 89 schools in the wider region, only ten remained open during the conflict, and Gendit Elementary was one of them. This resilience is a testament to Sue, Building Futures Ethiopia, Together We Learn, the teachers, and the wider community’s commitment to their children’s future.

The story of Gendit is one of vision, determination, and community spirit, sparked by a single traveller who wanted to make a difference. Today, hundreds of children have access to high-quality education in a region where opportunities were once scarce. And the work continues, with new facilities planned and an ever-growing commitment to nurturing the next generation.

It’s a reminder of what sustainable, community-focused engagement can achieve, and of the deep, lasting connections that can grow from meaningful travel.

If you’d like to help the new kindergarten students of Gendit, Building Futures Ethiopia is currently running a Christmas ‘Buy a Bag’ Challenge, where you can buy a school bag for one of the 50 students per class to help them transport their school books, which, for some students, is a 10 km walk to school. Each bag costs £10, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you would like to make a general donation, including gift aid, then please do this at the Building Futures Ethiopia website, where you can also read more about the school project.

If you know of any organisation that may be willing to partner with Building Futures Ethiopia to support a science laboratory or the construction of future classrooms, then please contact our Head of Sustainable Travel, Nardia: nardia.sullivan@wildfrontiers.co.uk.