School Founder

Fresh and Green Academy

Their Story

Fresh and Green Academy was started by Muday Mitiku in the Yeka Kifle Ketema neighborhood in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2000.

Originally it was founded as a for-profit school, but when Muday saw there were so many hungry children begging on the streets, she started to let them in to the school. The parents of the students who were paying tuition objected to their children going to school with the street children and pulled out.

Enter some intrepid flight attendants. On a life-changing volunteer trip to Fresh and Green Academy, they saw the school was in dire need of funds or it would fold. Trish Hack-Rubinstein, Amir Schutzer and Tim McNamee founded “Friends of Fresh and Green” as a not-for-profit corporation, whose sole mission is to keep the school going.

Today the school provides three meals a day, an education and basic medical care to over 250 students, pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade. The 50 graduates who are in high school also receive books, uniforms and meals. It also supports a Mother’s Cooperative that allows the mothers of the students to make crafts, thus empowering them and allowing them to feed their other children and themselves.