Project Harar exists to improve the lives of people, especially children and young people, with facial disabilities living in impoverished and isolated areas of Ethiopia, mainly in the Oromia and Somali regions of the country- by helping them to access professional medical care. These individuals are unable to access or afford the medical care that they desperately require for the disabilities and diseases affecting them. Project Harar secures early and effective medical treatment and after-care services, and promotes full integration back into their family and community life.
Project Harar is fifteen years old already and growing fast! Jonathan Crown, 51 is a successful businessman, a Chartered Accountant and a social entrepreneur. He founded the charity when he literally bumped into two severly facially disfisfigured street children in 2001 and rather than walk on, decided to come to their aid. Destitute, impoverished and ostracised, he realised immediately that they needed urgent attention or they might perish. Over the following months he found them complex facial surgery to repair their faces and rebuild their lives on a hospital hip owned by Mercy Ships in West Africa. He is now the unpaid CEO.
Since then, through the sophisticated outreach network that we have developed, which we believe to be unique in Africa, we have secured, mobilised and treated approaching 4,000 mainly young rural Ethiopians. All of our patients suffer life changing facial disfigurements, and almost all live a very lonely and disjointed existence. Children don't have friends and cannot go to school, adults cannot find employment and only rarely can they marry. We look to change all of that, incorporating a holistic approach to our work which puts our patients' wellbeing and experience at the forefront of everything we do.
Following Project Harar's comprehensive intervention, and after first class surgery performed in Addis Ababa, with their looks and health substantially improved, our patients can look forward with confidence to a new, successful and fulfilled life.
Project Harar is a young, innovative and ambitious organisation, we're looking to rapidly expand our capacity and reach, building on excellent recent progress.