Our Project Site

We are currently working with South Omo Valley communities. South Omo Zone is a zone in the Ethiopian Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region.

This zone is named for the Omo River, a river that flows south into Lake Turkana on the western side.

The region is majorly inhabited by nomadic and semi-nomadic ethnic groups. It is observed that the South Omo Zone is “one of Ethiopian’s socially most diverse zones. It contains a minimum of 12 different ethnic groups, and possibly as many as 21. Social diversity therefore compounds the existing problems of isolation, acute shortage of basic infrastructure as well as scarcity of professional and technical man-power.”

The region is also known to be a home to some of the last truly unchanged tribes-people within reach of the semi-civilized world.

The Omo Valley is cohabited by a colorful mix of tribes practicing a mixture of pastoralism, small scale cattle herding and subsistence agriculture.