Dr Dame Claire Bertschinger receives an Honorary Doctorate at Staffordshire University

I was honoured to be invited by Dr Dame Claire Berschinger to accompany her when she received an Honorary Doctorate from Staffordshire University. Her other guests were David Stables, the founder and CEO of the African Children’s Educational Trust, and former A-CET students Ysakor H Hailu and Sammy A Assefa to the Awards Ceremony.

Ysakor has just received his MBA from De Montfort University in Leicester and Sammy is completing his PhD at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge doing malarial genone research towards eradicating malaria. Sammy and Claire are now trustees of A-CET; Ysakor is now working in Addis Ababa.

Dr Dame Claire Bertschinger was a young Red Cross nurse running feeding programmes in Mekele and Korem in Ethiopia during the 1984/85 famine. Twenty years later she returned with Michael Buerk whose documentary had alerted the world to the unfolding horror. They met some famine survivors including Birhan Woldu (left). Birhan survived against the odds and was Bob Geldof’s Face of Famine at the Live Aid Concert in 2005. Birhan is a beautiful young woman. She has a degree in agriculture and is a nurse working on a WHO children’s nutrition programme.

A journalist, Michael Harvey, has written an account of Birhan’s life Feed the World- Birhan Woldu and Live Aid. He is donating the proceeds to the African Children’s Educational Trust who organised Birhan’s schooling.

Michael wrote a feature article for the Sun which is available here.