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Zemi Yenus – The Woman Who Instills an Attitude of Concern for Other
Founder and Director of NIA Foundation

Background
Zemi Yenus was born and raised in Addis Ababa. She left Ethiopia during the Red Terror, a time of violent political unrest in the late 1970s and went to Italy at age 17. At age 19, she started working for a Refugee Service Agency called UCEI that worked alongside with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. As part of her work, she was in charge of migrant’s entry to the U.S.A.

Returning briefly to Ethiopia in 1981, she was accused by the Military Government of assisting wanted criminals to escape through her work with the Refugee Services Agency in Rome, which put her in their black list. Avoiding the upcoming threat, she immigrated to the United States, where she resided for fourteen years.

After completing a course in Cosmetology, she worked in several places in California, including in Hollywood and Beverly Hills and established her own beauty salon in Los Angeles.

In 1992, soon after the Military Regime changed, when Zemi returned to Ethiopia for a vacation, she was dismayed to see many young girls to have been forced to turn to sex work to support themselves and their families. As most of the issue related to poverty and engagement in risky sexual and addiction behaviors are desperation, hopelessness, and lack of guidance, Zemi said, “It is now our duty to make it up for our country by doing everything possible to change the situation and guide many to better alternatives”.

She decided to move back permanently so that she could contribute to her beloved country’s development, with a special concern for young girls. On her return to Ethiopia, she opened ‘Niana School of Beauty and Modeling’, the first licensed professional beauty and modeling school in the country. She has trained more than six thousand young women and men in the profession, most of whom are working and many of whom opened their own businesses. Finding that there were many young women who wanted to work in the beauty field but could not afford the fees, she began to give scholarships and worked with non-governmental organizations. She worked on developing their hidden talents and trained most of her students in life skills and Reproductive Health to help them change their whole approach to their lives.

Meanwhile, at home, she was facing enormous challenges because her son was continuously expelled from schools because of his autism. He was viewed as spoiled and undisciplined. She tried several schools for her son, hoping to find one that could meet his needs. Finding no schools equipped to deal with children in the Autism Spectrum Disorder in Ethiopia, she had to decide whether to go back to the United States, where such schools existed, or stay in Ethiopia. While exploring her options, she learned about other parents’ challenges in raising their children with autism. Particularly she found out that mothers were blamed for their children’s’ autism and single handedly were crying in the dark. She witnessed that many children with Autism were considered cursed and possessed and, as a result, they were chained and locked away in dark rooms, to the point that some were not even considered as part of their families. Determinedto end the stigma, exclusion and physical confinement that afflicted autistic youngsters, Zemi decided to stay in Ethiopia and made her life’s purpose to aware the public about autism and to change the lives of parents and children with Autism and other Intellectual disorders.