When Menschen für Menschen began the integrated rural development project in Merhabete in 1992, the district in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia was one of the poorest and most backward in the country. Since this time problems are addressed systematically in each individual community.

The community of Kollash is located on a 2,600 m high table mountain. Its 7,000 inhabitants used to be almost completely cut off from the outside world. Everything - from food to building materials - had to be carried up with the aid of donkeys. Today there is a 35 km gravel road built along the steep rock face by Menschen für Menschen with the active participation of the population. For the inhabitants of Kollash this road is the much longed-for gate to the world. Karlheinz Böhm remembers his first journey as quite an adventure: "Considering the steepness and all the curves, it's nothing short of a miracle that my co-workers and I as the driver survived that hair-raising ascent!"

Help Ethiopia to develop under its own power: Give us your support, for help is better than pity.