Shlomo Berihun
Shlomo Berihun in Winnia, a village near Gondar, Ethiopia. The family worked on the land and made a meager living.
He credits his parents for instilling in him the dream of one day coming to Jerusalem. Israel launched operation Moses in 1984 to repatriate Ethiopian Jews from the Gondar area. People went to the Sudan on a perilous journey and the lucky ones were airlifted.
Twelve year old Shlomi set out without his parents, on a long march where they were robbed and thousands perished along the way. They arrived and spent months in a nasty refugee camp. Later, they were flown directly to Israel. He studied the Hebrew language, attending religious school after which he entered the Yemini Orde high school near and graduated from there. Shlomo joined the IDF to serve his new nation and spent three years. After his initial assignment to a combat unit, he transferred to an assignment dealing with new immigrant soldiers to facilitate their adaptation and assimilation being part of the IDF Education Corps.
After the IDF, he enrolled at Haifa University and earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology and human services. He was director of empowerment at Shatil and adviser to national leadership and local NGOs in Israel. At present, Shlomo is President of the David Foundation. His true passion is to find better ways and means to facilitate the integration of young Israeli Ethiopians into the greater society, so they become not only independent and self-supporting but also become contributing members of society.