She never learned to read.
She taught her daughters to love it.
Wubayehu Desta could not read a word. Her daughter did not finish school. Every one of her granddaughters holds a college degree, and some hold more than one. That is not luck. That is one woman’s insistence, carried three generations forward.
The Desta Foundation exists to keep that insistence moving in two directions at once: forward, through scholarships for girls in rural Ethiopia, and backward, through an oral history archive for elders whose stories have never been written down. One hand reaches ahead. One hand reaches back.
Two directions
The foundation is small and deliberate. Everything it does falls under one of three headings.
Scholarships for girls in rural Ethiopia
School fees, materials, uniforms and the small costs that quietly end a girl’s education. We fund the whole gap, not part of it, and we stay with a student year to year.
An oral history archive for elders
Recorded interviews with elders who were never given the means to write their own lives down, held somewhere safe, in their own voices and their own languages.
Mentorship between generations
Pairing students with the women who came before them, so that advice, memory and encouragement move in both directions rather than skipping a generation.
An illiterate woman built a library out of her daughters.
Where it stands today
This is the beginning. The foundation is being built now, in public, by the family it belongs to. Programmes are being designed, partners are being found, and the first recordings are being planned.
If you knew Wubayehu, or you know a girl who needs a year of school paid for, or an elder whose story should be recorded, that is the help we need most right now.
Ways to helpA family project, held to a public standard
The Desta Foundation was started by Wubayehu Desta’s granddaughters to do two things her own life was never given the chance to do: send girls to school, and put an elder’s story on the record.
What we do
We pay for girls in rural Ethiopia to stay in school, and we record the life histories of elders who have no other way to leave one behind. Between those two, we run a mentorship programme that puts them in the same room.
The two halves are not separate causes. A girl who is told her grandmother’s life mattered reads differently. An elder who is asked to speak into a microphone by a schoolgirl answers differently.
Why now
The generation that remembers Wubayehu is the generation we are losing. Every year that passes without a recording is a life that leaves no document behind, and there is no way to go back for it.
The same urgency runs the other way. A girl pulled out of school at thirteen for the cost of a uniform rarely returns at fourteen.
How we work
Small, and honest about it
We would rather fund twelve students completely than a hundred partially. Where we have not started something yet, this site says so.
The story belongs to the teller
Nobody is recorded without consent, nothing is published a family asks us to hold back, and every recording is kept in the language it was given in.
Local before anything else
Schools, teachers and community elders decide who needs help and who should be interviewed. We are the ones who pay for it and keep the records safe.
Built to outlast us
An archive is only worth making if it survives. Recordings are stored in more than one place, in open formats, with the family holding a copy.
Wubayehu Desta
She is my grandmother. She is an incredible woman. She never learned how to read.
What she did instead was give the love of reading to her daughter, who did not finish school herself. That daughter passed it on again. Today every one of her granddaughters is at least college educated, and several of us went further than that.
Three generations moved in one lifetime, on the strength of something she was never allowed to have for herself. This foundation is an attempt to hold on to that, and to make it do more work.
The inheritance
There is a particular kind of parent who wants something for their child that they cannot themselves demonstrate. It is harder than it sounds. You cannot read to a child if you cannot read. You cannot help with the homework. You cannot check the work, or explain the word, or point at a page and say this, this is what I mean.
You can only insist. You can decide that in this house the book is the important thing, and hold to that decision for years without ever being able to open one yourself.
That is the inheritance. Not literacy, which she did not have to give. The insistence, which she did.
Most of her life is not written down anywhere. We are gathering it now, from the people who were there. If you knew Wubayehu Desta, or you have a photograph, a letter, or a memory of her, we would like to record it.
Add to her storyThree programmes, one idea
Send girls to school. Record the elders. Put the two of them in touch.
Scholarships
For girls in rural Ethiopia, from primary through secondary school.
Girls in rural Ethiopia rarely leave school because of a single dramatic event. They leave over a uniform, an exam fee, a textbook, a bus fare, a term when the family needs another pair of hands. Each cost is small. Together they end an education.
We fund the whole gap for one student for one year at a time, and we renew rather than rotate. A scholarship that lasts four years changes a life. A scholarship that lasts one changes a semester.
The oral history archive
Recorded life histories of elders, kept safely and in their own voices.
Many elders have never had the means, the literacy or the invitation to tell their own story, let alone somewhere safe to keep it. We sit down with them, record as long as they want to talk, and hold the recording properly: transcribed, catalogued, backed up, and copied to the family.
Nothing is published without permission. The story belongs to the person who told it, and after them to their family. We are the custodians, not the owners.
Mentorship across generations
The part that makes the other two worth doing together.
Students on scholarship are matched with women further along than they are, and with the elders whose histories we record. Some of it is practical: how to choose a subject, how to sit an exam, how to leave home for the first time. Some of it is simply being known by someone who expects you to finish.
The students also help make the archive. A girl holding the recorder while an eighty-year-old woman describes her wedding is doing two things at once, and she is the reason we bother to do either.
Photographs and papers
One photograph so far. The rest of this page is waiting for the family albums, and for the work to start producing its own record.
daughters
graduation day
students
archive session
and papers
Have a photograph of Wubayehu, or of the family? Send it to us and we will add it here with a proper caption.
Five things that would help right now
Money is only one of them, and at this stage it is not the most useful.
Tell us about Wubayehu
If you knew her, or your family did, we want the memory recorded before it goes. A photograph, a story, a correction to something on this site.
Nominate an elder to interview
Someone in your family or community whose life should be on the record, and who would want to talk. We will bring the recorder and the patience.
Mentor a student
An hour a month, by phone or in person. Most useful from women who have been through school, university, or leaving home for the first time.
Lend a skill
Archivists, translators, audio engineers, lawyers and accountants: the archive needs to be built properly the first time, and the foundation needs to be set up properly too.
Fund a year of school
Once giving opens, one gift covers one girl for one year, entirely. Until then you can ask to be told when it does.
What your money would do
The foundation is not yet taking donations. When it is, this is where the money goes and how we will account for it.
Where it goes
A year of secondary school for one girl
Fees, uniform, books, materials and transport, in full, for one student for one academic year.
One recorded and archived life history
The interview itself, transcription and translation, storage in two places, and a copy handed back to the family.
The equipment the archive runs on
Recorders, storage drives and the annual cost of keeping the archive backed up and readable.
Exact figures will be published here alongside the first annual account, once the programmes are running and the costs are real rather than estimated.
Be told when it opens
We would rather not take money before we can say exactly where it went. Leave an address and we will write to you once the foundation is registered and the first cohort is chosen.
Thank you. We have your address and will write when giving opens.
Write to the foundation
A family reads these. Replies may take a few days, but they come.
Thank you — your message is with us.
Someone in the family will read it and write back.