‘You can’t learn if you’re hungry – thank god for Band Aid’ – how Ethiopian schoolkids are thriving thanks to charity

ARRIVING at the remote village school in the Tigray highlands, Band Aid icon Birhan Woldu is swamped by a sea of smiling faces.

At the head of the crowd, two beaming children are holding a sign they have fashioned from ragged paper.

“Thank you Bob Geldof, thank you Band Aid,” it reads in blue and red marker pen.

Critics here in Britain have labelled the charity “colonialist” and decried Sir Bob as having a “white saviour complex”.

The 600 hungry kids who receive a square meal at Hagere Selam school every day — paid for with Band Aid cash — would beg to differ.

Birhan — whose emaciated image on a TV news report 40 years ago alerted the world to the Ethiopian tragedy — now sits with Feven Kibrom as the youngster tucks into a plate of beans, wheat and sorghum paste served up by local volunteers for UK charity Mary’s Meals.

Farmer’s daughter Feven, eight, said: “It’s delicious. It takes me 40 minutes to walk to school so I look forward to our meal at 10.30am.”

The youngster — who has a cross of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church dangling from her neck — added: “My favourite subject is English. I want to be a teacher when I grow up.”

The queue of eager children aged three to 16 snakes around the dusty playground as they wait patiently for their meal.

Clearly moved, mum-of-two Birhan tells me: “These kids are being fed because of Band Aid. I’m very proud.

“Education is the key to changing these children’s lives.”

Watching these youngsters fill their stomachs, it’s difficult to imagine the parallel moral universe where some people think Band Aid is a bad thing.

Geldof’s brainchild is currently funding a school meal a day for 10,900 children through Mary’s Meals.

School vice director Hilftom Hailu, 32, said: “Many don’t have much food at home. You can’t learn if you’re hungry.

“The money from Band Aid means they get a nutritious square meal every day.”

For some, it may be their only meal of the day.

Hunger is again stalking this land after a devastating civil war and last year’s failed rains.

For Birhan, 43, the significance of the children’s Band Aid meals is very personal.

Ravaged by hunger, she was seen as a three-year-old on big screens at the 1985 Live Aid gig seemingly moments from death.

The £85,000 little stone school itself was built with cash raised by the 20th anniversary release of Do They Know It’s Christmas?.

The idea to release that version came from The Sun after we engineered a meeting between Bob Geldof and Birhan for the first time.

Almost 15 years ago to the day, she and Geldof attended the school’s inauguration ceremony.

As they held hands and walked into the school grounds, local musicians played Do They Know It’s Christmas?, leaving Geldof welling with tears.

The neat breeze-block building with a corrugated roof was described by Bob as “the best school I’ve seen here”.

Today, nursing graduate Birhan soon sets about mothering seven-year-olds Ma’edi Kahsu and Hewan Kalayu as they scrape their bowls clean.

Ma’edi has walked alone for 20 minutes through the parched uplands to attend classes, where her favourite subject is science.

Dressed in white, embroidered Tigrayan robes, Birhan says: “Band Aid has changed so many people’s lives.

“The children here are very thankful. But we need more help for these kids and others who aren’t in school.”

She’s never heard of Ed Sheeran — the most high-profile Band Aid naysayer — but believes he is wrong to withdraw his support for the song.

Sheeran, who took part in the 30th anniversary release, said he would not have allowed his vocals to be included on the new version, had his permission been sought.

The star cited comments by rapper Fuse ODG who accused Band Aid of causing harm by “perpetuating damaging stereotypes” of Africa.

Live Aid promoter Harvey Goldsmith dismissed Band Aid’s critics as “busybodies and woke do-gooders”.

His fire undamped by his critics, Geldof insisted: “This little pop song has kept millions of people alive.

“Why would Band Aid scrap feeding thousands of children dependent on us for a meal?

“There are 600million hungry people in the world — 300million are in Africa. We can help some of them. That’s what we will continue to do.”

‘We need more help’

It was in these sun-scorched highlands of Tigray, northern Ethiopia, that Michael Buerk’s 1984 BBC footage of starving people was shot.

And it was those harrowing images — in which a nurse had to choose which children to treat and which to let die — inspired Band Aid.

The school, in the village of Munguda, is reached by washed-out, rock-strewn tracks which can only be traversed by a 4x4 at a snail’s pace.

Life for many families living in these desolate mountains has changed little for millennia.

From the window of our truck, I watched farmers harvesting wheat with hand scythes while long-horned oxen trampled the cut stalks in an ancient form of milling.

The children here know the value of an education and are desperate to learn.

Last year Band Aid provided cash for exercise books, pens, pencils, sharpeners and school bags at Hagere Selam through UK charity the African Children’s Educational Trust.

A £50,000 handout to A-CET allowed 10,000 children to receive similar teaching aids in the region.

A-CET’s man on the ground here is Bisrat Mesfin, who tells me: “Band Aid work here in Tigray has been incredible. For 15 years, this school has been life-changing for the thousands of children educated here.”

Bisrat acted as Birhan’s translator after The Sun flew them to London to take part in Live 8.

Around three billion people around the world watched as the women from remote Tigray joined Madonna on stage in London’s Hyde Park.

Bisrat, who still proudly wears his Sun T-shirt from that day, added: “We need more cash so that we can make the children have a better and brighter future.”

Many youngsters still haven’t returned to classes after one of Africa’s deadliest conflicts in decades ravaged the highlands.

The war broke out in 2020 between Tigrayan fighters and an allied force of Eritreans and Ethiopian government troops.

It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of people were either killed in the conflict, starved to death or perished through lack of healthcare.

‘Silent emergency’

Tigray’s towns and villages were systematically looted, with valuables and personal effects carried away.

School vice director Hilftom added: “Soldiers broke down our doors with bullets and knives and stole our computers.”

Although a peace deal was signed two years ago, only around 40 per cent of youngsters are back at school.

Last year rains failed, causing food shortages. In July local officials warned that more than two million people were at risk of starvation.

Food handouts at Hagere Selam are organised by Mary’s Meals, a charity founded by Scottish salmon farmer Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow.

A spokesman for the Argyll-based charity Thomas Black said that through the “generosity of Band Aid” and others they have moved from feeding 24,000 children in Tigray to 110,000 in the past year.

Mary’s Meals says it costs just £19.15 to feed a child daily for a school year.

The Band Aid Trust has used £3million in funds to help a projected 350,000 people so far this financial year, mostly in Ethiopia.

A proposal from one UN agency said they needed Band Aid’s support because “the situation in Ethiopia continues to be a silent and underfunded emergency”.

Later we visited a village school in nearby Dansa where Band Aid had provided funds for desks and chairs.

I was shown what was left of the school library after it scored a direct hit from an artillery shell in the recent war.

Wolde Gabriel, 12, who dreams of being a doctor, said: “There was a terrible sound of bullets and shelling.”

Principal Hagos Teka, 43, said: “All our books were destroyed.”

After visiting the schools I spoke with Bob and told him how teachers in the region were thankful but said they needed more food and more school equipment.

“They’ll get it,” the Band Aid guru insisted.

It’s why, 40 years on, he’s released his “little pop song” to work its magic once more.