The study places at the Menschen für Menschen Agrotechnical Training College (ATTC) are very much in demand, for the graduates can be sure of a life without hunger. Here the trainees learn a profession according to the German curriculum.

The ATTC at Harar in eastern Ethiopia, where only children of particularly poor families are eligible for a traineeship, is a key project for Karlheinz Böhm's Ethiopia Relief. For over a decade 796 young people have received training in motor mechanics, electrical engineering and metalworking. In addition, government employed agricultural advisers undertake a three-month advanced training course. The costs for teachers, accommodation, teaching material and catering of the students have paid off: 98 percent of graduates have already found employment on the day of graduation. The state-owned airline Ethiopian Airlines hires a large number of ATTC graduates as ground personnel at the nearby Provincial airport and the capital Addis Ababa. "In contrast, the agricultural advisers take their knowledge into the villages, where it grows for the benefit of the whole community," explains Stefanos Wolde Mariam, College Administrator.

"The curriculum for the technical trades is based on those in Germany," says Klaus-Dieter Feser, engineer and training officer of the ATTC metal engineering. For several months in the first year the trainees are required to stand at workbenches, filing their specimens to an accuracy level of a hundredth millimetre. In their second year they work on modern lathes, grinders and planes with German name plaques - mostly company donations. "The next step is computer-controlled machines," says the training officer optimistically.

Sometimes trainees practice by developing and repairing equipment and machines for the individual development projects. This enables Karlheinz Böhm to "kill two birds with one stone", as an Ethiopian saying goes. For instance, trainees sometimes construct threshing machines for millet, driven by a small diesel engine. Or ATTC trainees repair water pumps for village wells.

In mid-December 2004 the President of the Federal Republic of Germany and his wife visited the training facility. The following entry can be found in the guest book: "The humaneness of the world will be decided in Africa's destiny. Karlheinz and Almaz Böhm give us hope and encouragement. For this we thank them. Eva and Horst Köhler." No title was written after the name, as though the Federal President had wished to say during his visit: What matters is not rank, but what the individual does.