At the very beginning of Meleya…

Michel and Debritu

The Meleya adventure started four years ago, when a close friend of mine, Debritu, an Ethiopian woman entrepreneur, asked me to co-organize the Ethiopia Millennium, occurring on the 12th of September 2007. I was honored and accepted with enthusiasm. We agreed on the fact that we also had to initiate a sustainable project, involving both Ethiopia and The Netherlands.

I see myself again, taking a white sheet of paper and writing my thoughts about it. I am not a specialist in humanitarian issues, neither in geopolitical questions but I know one thing: you get the best out of people when you empower them. And to empower Ethiopian people, you need a common project, together with Europeans, on equal basis. Next to this, I am convinced from the start that we have to focus on young people and stimulate them to become entrepreneurs.

My core-business being marketing-communication, a logic idea was to work together with students on both sides, Ethiopia and The Netherlands, in order to create a new sustainable brand. Debritu and I selected two schools, specialized in marketing, the New Business School Amsterdam and the Saint Mary University College in Addis Ababa. We travelled with 12 Dutch students to Addis in order to meet their 12 Ethiopian fellow students and work together on a challenging assignment: create a brand of a new kind, responsible, sustainable and cool at the same time.

I remember that our young people learnt first to know each other by talking and exchanging about their differences or similarities. Then came the travelling within Ethiopia, the laughing and the dancing in the bus, it was great  because I felt then that they could perfectly get along with each other and share the same dreams and goals. They worked hard on their assignment, based at Saint Mary University. We divided them in mixed groups in order to compete. This gave an extra stimulation to the process, every group did its best. Then came the final presentation in front of a jury of teachers and entrepreneurs. Most proposals were really creative and well thought about.  We choose for the name fitting the most with the spirit of the project: Meleya, meaning Identity and “A unique embrace” as a slogan. A new brand was born…

Four years after, I am leaving for the 6^th time to Ethiopia with Dutch students of NBS. A lot of good things have happened in between and a lot of obstacles had to be over won. Meleya has became a beautiful foundation, owner of the brand, chasing a noble goal which is educate young people and stimulate their entrepreneurship. The Meleya brand also allows the selling of Ethiopian Premium coffee. I will tell you more about the Meleya Foundation within a couple of days.

With a unique embrace,

Michel Le Roux

An impression of our first trip to Ethiopia