Yared Wolde was six years old when he was orphaned. His father died in the Ethiopian army.  His mother and siblings died of tuberculosis.  His own community ostracised him as they were afraid of the disease.

He found work in the city markets, slept in a drain, used his earnings to pay for education, and fed himself from the market garbage.

In 2009 at the age of 22 he founded The School of St. Yared, solely for children like himself from the slums of Addis Ababa.  This school is a beacon of light in the community providing some of the highest quality bi-lingual education in Ethiopia to some of its most impoverished and marginalised children.  It has 316 children (2017) with a vision to have over 1000 in the next 10 years.  

This is no ordinary school. The curriculum and the comprehensive pastoral care package is designed to empower these children to move out of the hopelessness and drudgery of intense poverty and deprivation, and through their own efforts, change their life chances, those of their families and their communities, and become significant contributors to the development of the Ethiopian economy.