HISTORY OF THE KOSSOYE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
The Kossoye Project was started in October of 1963. Dennis Carlson, at the time Co-Director and Professor at the Haile Sellasie I Public Health College and Training Centre, spent most Fridays with students visiting rural communities. The purpose was to make classroom learning relevant through service and research projects in rural communities where it was hoped that most students would eventually work. The Kossoye community, located 25 kilometers from the college, proved to be an idealrural laboratory and class room. Over the past 48 years several hundred students and faculty members from the University of Gondar and other institutions have worked in Kossoye.
The Kossoye community has remained important at what is now the University of Gondar because of its long history as a rural outreach center. In 1994 Dennis Carlson returned with his son, Andrew, to write a history of the community. In 2005 local leaders asked for help in addressing current community-wide health problems, particularly trachoma, diarrhea, intestinal parasites, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. Specific household based interventions from 2005 through 2007, facilitated by community health workers, dramatically reduced trachoma and intestinal parasites. But malnutrition proved a more difficult problem. Indeed, levels of stunting in children were dramatically higher than they were when similar health surveys were conducted in 1967.
In response several faculty members from the University of Gondar, along with the Carlsons, initiated a household vegetable gardening program. The Kossoye Project Management Team was created to coordinate activities between the University of Gondar, district and regional governments (especially the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Agriculture), as well as teachers and community health workers. Local Community Health Workers were trained to provide instruction on basic health practices as well as household gardening for mothers in their neighborhoods. Demonstration gardens were built at the health post and the elementary schools. Students at the elementary schools were provided with 
vegetable seeds, tools, and gardening manuals. A board was organized in the United States to encourage and support these activities. Dennis Carlson was the first Director. Currently Andrew Carlson serves as Director, Dennis Carlson as Associate Director, and Beulah Downing as Secretary and Treasurer. Most of the ten board members have visited the University of Gondar and volunteered at project sites in Ethiopia.
In 2010 administrators at the University of Gondar conceived of the idea of “scaling up” the Kossoye Project so that other communities through the region would also be able to learn about household gardening. This is now part of a university-wide effort to engage faculty and students in service and research to help rural communities improve food security, using many of the lessons learned from the Kossoye Project. The primary strategy is to use intersect oral collaboration—the coordinated engagement of all the stakeholders in health and development—to spread the idea that household gardens can be an important complement to food security.
Between 2007 and 2011 about 20% of the 1,600 families in the 28 neighborhoods that make up the Kossoye district established household gardens. Now the goal of the Kossoye Development Program is to spread household gardening to at least 50,000 families in the Amhara National Regional State by 2016. The hope is that this will improve food security and the nutritional status of women and children.
THE KOSSOYE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM TEAM
Nancy Belcher has a B.S. in Nutritional Science and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. After many years as a professor of biology Nancy returned to school and received a Masters of Public Administration in an effort to effectively assist non-profits - especially in the areas of environmental sciences. Nancy currently works for the Arboretum Foundation in Seattle, Washington as an environmental policy consultant. Nancy’s interests in the Kossoye Project stems from her travel to Ethiopia with her family and seeing the exciting impact of the Kossoye Project firsthand. After years of hearing stories about Ethiopia from her husband and his family, who spent years living in Ethiopia when her husband was a child, Nancy was delighted to finally experience the rich culture of Ethiopia firsthand. She joined the board in 2011. |
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Jessica Bilecki’s interests in sustainability have led her to study development and the environment in Thailand, endangered salamanders in The Great Smokey Mountains, and native prairie restoration in Illinois. She has experience helping to start and operate a CSA in Ohio, and teaching about gardening and environmental issues to a variety of audiences. Jessica is from the Chicago suburbs, has a B.S. in Environmental Science from Towson University and is currently studying food security and food deserts in rural Appalachian Ohio while pursuing a M.S. degree in Environmental Studies. She also enjoys a good game of volleyball from time to time especially with Kossoye students! Jessica joined the board in 2010. |
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Andrew Carlson, the Director of the KDP Board, is a professor of history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. He came to Ethiopia for the first time when he was nearly two years old (1958) and lived there for nine years. He is co-author with his father, Dennis Carlson, of Health, Wealth, and Family in Rural Ethiopia: Kossoye, North Gondar Region, 1963-2007 (Addis Ababa Press, 2008). He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio and (for a few weeks most years in Gondar) and has been on the board since 2008. |
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Dennis Carlson is an international public health physician who has been involved in Ethiopian health services since 1958. He served as dean and professor at the Public Health College in Gondar in the 1960s and professor of community health in Addis Ababa University in the 1990s. He taught human resource development at Johns Hopkins University for eleven years and served as a public health consultant in many countries in Africa and the Caribbean. He serves as Associate Director for the Kossoye Development Program. |
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Frank Doden earned a B.A. in Speech Communication and an M.A. in English Literature from Iowa State University. He completed his Ph.D. in English Literature at The University of Kansas in 1995. He has taught English at Iowa State University, The University of Kansas, The Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City, and he currently teaches high school English at The Columbus School for Girls in Columbus, Ohio. He has been on the board of the KDP since 2010. |
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Beulah Downing, Secretary and Treasurer, lived in Ethiopia for 8 years, working for Save the Children in orphan outreach. She holds a Master of Social Work and a BSc in Mathematics. She has taught mathematics at the High School level and previously has been Treasurer for the Bainbridge Island Senior Center. She lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington and has been on the board since 2008. |
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Nikki Rogers is a biological anthropologist with a primary interest in the interactions of culture and biology. She uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the ways that cultural beliefs and practices affect health, especially in women in underserved populations. Dr. Rogers is currently a Research Assistant Professor at Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine and in the Department of Community Health. She has been on the board since 2010. |
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Tom Ringo is a CPA and the CFO of a microcap publicly traded timber and real estate company based near Seattle. Mr. Ringo has a BA in History from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Washington. He has been on the Board of the KDP since 2011. |
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David Veterane has had a career in investment management and was a founding partner of Rainier Investment Management. He currently serves as Chairman of Harrison Medical Center board. For twenty five years he volunteered as a probation officer for Kitsap Court Juvenile Diversion Program. He earned a B.A in Finance and Accounting from the University of Washington and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He has been on the board of the Kossoye Development Program since 2008. |
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Mary White, PhD, teaches medical ethics and global health at the Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University, in Dayton, OH. Her work in global health includes six years directing a global health course for medical students, establishing a formal partnership between Wright State University and the University of Gondar, and teaching in medical and public health training programs in Ethiopia and Uganda. She has been to Kossoye twice, in 2009 and 2010 and has been on the board since 2010. |
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