Human rights lawyer Frank Cassar, 54, has set up a project in Ethiopia aimed at providing people with an education without imposing an alien culture. He tells Rosanne Zammit about his project, which will be three years old in summer.

Tamrat Kassa Kebede is 15 years old. He is an Ethiopian studying for his A levels. Up to two years ago, he lived with his unemployed mother and his step father who woke him up at 3 a.m. every day to go to the forest kilometres away to collect wood and carry it on his shoulders up the mountain to sell it at the market in Bonga, earning four birr (16c) a day. When the boy did not earn his money, he was locked outdoors and would have to sleep outside.

To study, Tamrat used to lay awake at night and go through his papers by candlelight. In spite of these difficulties, he was getting satisfactory results.

Now, Tamrat lives with Catholic priests in Bonga after Dr Cassar (right) paid his father the money the boy would have earned in a year.

He is one of the 291 Ethiopians being sponsored by Dr Cassar, who first went to Addis Adaba, in Ethiopia in August 2003. On that first visit, he worked at a hospital with mentally disabled children but he knew somehow that was not his call.

An opportunity soon knocked, when he befriended a 19-year-old teacher of physically handicapped students at the same hospital. The children loved their teacher, who used to earn 100 birr (Lm4 a month) but Dr Cassar asked him why he had stopped studying. The teacher, Ashenafi Taye, replied he had no money for tuition fees. Moreover, his mother was on her own, had another five children and he was their breadwinner.

Dr Cassar told Ashenafi he would give him 200 bir (Lm8) a month and cover his tuition fees so that he could continue with his education.

But Ashenafi was afraid to accept the offer there and then. He told Dr Cassar he would be giving up his job and he (Dr Cassar) might decide to stop paying him once he returned home. To prove his commitment, Dr Cassar accompanied Ashenafi to open a bank account and he gave him enough money for a year.

Dr Cassar realised this was one way he could help so he asked Ashenafi to assist him in finding other people who had to give up their studies because of financial restraints so he could help them.

The lunch hours of the few remaining days were spent looking for people Dr Cassar could support. On that first visit to Ethiopia, he sponsored 16 students.

Dr Cassar returned to Malta satisfied he was doing something good for others less fortunate giving an opportunity to people whose future would have otherwise been bleak.

He did not return home, however, before promising his protégés he would go back in December.

Before that first trip to Ethiopia was over, Dr Cassar had already sensed that Ethiopia was to become his second home. He returned as promised but before then, he had met Gozitan missionary priest Fr Gorg Grima and told him what he was doing. Fr Grima approved of his project and gave him money to take to nuns in Ethiopia.

Dr Cassar recalls asking Fr Grima if he should help Muslims should they seek his assistance and Fr Grima's reply was: "Of course, isn't that obvious?"

He had read a lot about Ethiopia including an interesting article by an Ethiopian bishop in which he attacked the UN for deciding on the exact location of the Ethiopian/Eritrean border without ever visiting either of the two countries.

Dr Cassar e-mailed the bishop congratulating him on his article and telling him about his project. The bishop replied, telling him he would like to meet him and inviting him to also launch his project in Adigrad - 1,200 kilometres north of Addis Adaba.

When Dr Cassar returned to Ethiopia that December, he set up a committee of three people, namely himself, Ashenafi and Barbanu Degefa, another Ethiopian he was sponsoring.

After checking upon the students he was helping, Dr Cassar went to Jimma and Bonga, both to the south of the country, to transfer Fr Grima's money to the nuns.

He told the nuns what he was doing in Addis Adaba and offered to run a similar programme in their two towns, an offer they immediately accepted.

He had to interview long queues of people to ensure they were poor and motivated and finally sponsored another 15 students from Jimma and 14 from Bonga.

Following his return to Addis Adaba, he rented a van and blackened his face so as to mix well with the people and embarked on the long four-day trip to Adigrad launching the project there as well.

So by his second visit to Ethiopia, Dr Cassar was sponsoring 82 people in four locations.

The project, named OK Ethiopia (Opportunity Knocks Ethiopia), was registered with the Ethiopian government during Dr Cassar's third visit in July 2004.

On the registration forms, he had been asked if he would be willing to help people nominated to him by the Ethiopian government. Dr Cassar replied in the negative. He was summoned within 24 hours because the application could not be accepted unless the reply to that question was changed to a positive one. But Dr Cassar threatened that if his project was not accepted, he would take it to Eritrea. The government officials gave in and the project was duly registered.

During that third visit, the project was also expanded to Lalibela and Meki. He left Ethiopia having launched the project in six localities and sponsoring 187 students.

When he returned in December of that same year, he launched the project in Bahar Dar and in Aksum.

He was back in Ethiopia last summer but had to give his trip last December a miss. Presently, he is sponsoring 291 students although he has sponsored more than 500 overall. Some finished their studies, others he stopped sponsoring because they were not showing enough motivation and a few simply disappeared.

The project is costing Lm30,000 a year.

During his last visit, Dr Cassar met Fr Maurice Mifsud, of the Youth Travel Circle, who was invited to join the committee during an interview session.

Fr Maurice liked the project so much that in Malta he convinced Dr Cassar he could not keep the project to himself and so the Opportunity Knocks Support Group Malta was eventually set up.

A committee was formed and besides Dr Cassar and Fr Maurice, its other members are two lawyers, two doctors, two company managers and a bank manager.

The committee will now be launching another project for poor people in Ethiopia whereby they will fork out the initial expenditure and expertise to help clusters of people set up cooperatives. The people would slowly pay back OK Ethiopia and, hopefully, be self-sufficient within five years.

Moreover, contact is being made with the 14 universities in Ethiopia to encourage them to make it compulsory for their new doctors to do voluntary work for about two months in Ethiopian hospitals or clinics, which work would also serve them as a credit.

Donations to OK Ethiopia can be made at Bank of Valletta account 40010883921.