Fighting chance for Ethiopians

Norm Perdue used to have a home office he called his "Ethiopia Room." Those were the days when he was able to contain this project to one desk and a few walls.

These days, his Children of Ethiopia Education Fund has taken over his house and his life. COEFF, which he began in 2001 as a small nonprofit, now helps 800 girls attend school in a country where most girls either don't get any education or are encouraged to drop out early.

But the number of children who could be helped seems endless, which is why photos of shy faces stare up from a pile of 150 applications in his Murray home. These are girls whom Perdue helped interview on a recent trip to Ethiopia; the next step is to match them up with sponsors.

Perdue used to be an official photographer for the Utah Jazz, so he knows how to take a good picture. But he also knows, in the world of nonprofits, that he's competing with hundreds of other worthy projects, each with brochures and Web sites full of endearing smiles and touching stories.

So two years ago he helped audition the best dancers from the program's 22 schools and launched the Mesgana Dancers. The troupe, he reasoned, could reach American audiences in a different way — less a plea and more a confirmation that his program is turning out girls destined for a future that doesn't include prostitution or an early marriage. Although many of the students come from impoverished backgrounds, Perdue focuses on possibilities rather than pathos. "Mesgana" is Amharic for "gratitude."

This week, Perdue and 10 members of the dance troupe, ages 7 to 12, will arrive in New York City to begin their second annual dance tour. This year's is twice as big, with performances in 16 cities, including Chicago; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; New York City; Salt Lake City; and Los Angeles. The tour is also sponsored by Ethiopia Reads, a nonprofit that describes its mission as "building a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books."

As they tour the country, Perdue hopes the Mesgana Dancers will also unite Ethiopia's sometimes factional immigrant communities. He is proud of a comment, made during last year's tour, by the leader of an Ethiopian center in California: "I've never seen anything bring our community together like this."

Perdue — known as "Mr. Norm" among the students and parents in Ethiopia — fell into all this one day in the summer of 2001 on a humanitarian trip with his wife, Ruthann, who is a nurse. It was then that he met a chatty 12-year-old girl named Kidest, an orphan who lived with her grandmother.