• About our Founder:

  Anna Hovde, a Master’s Level Social Worker, began her mission in 2001 with a simple question: How can one person reach out to help people and make a difference in Africa? Anna located a nongovernmental organization (NGO) on the internet, contacted them, and within weeks she was off to Ethiopia, along with a former US Ambassador to Ethiopia and a group of other concerned global citizens. Thus began her amazing journey of hope.

  Toward the end of 2001, Anna left her home in Texas and moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for most of a year. She realized the need to spend time living in the culture and researching the wide sphere of needs for the people of Ethiopia.

  From 2001 to the present, Anna has traveled back and forth numerous times and has used her natural abilities to inspire people to action. Through her networking skills, she has brought some miraculous improvements to Addis Ababa and to Ethiopia.

  Some of her accomplishments include:

  1. Making contacts at Addis Ababa University Faculty of Medicine (AAU/FOM) and identifying specific needs in order to rapidly improve the quantity and quality of health care services available
  2. Drafting an international team of volunteers who donated and created a much needed computer network for the medical school, allowing internet access and giving medical students crucial medical research and procedural information from around the world
  3. Coordinating a medical mission of 40 international physicians and health care professionals who performed 130 surgical procedures, including 10 open heart surgeries, the first ever in Ethiopia
  4. Working with the University of Illinois at Chicago Jane Addams School of Social Work to establish the first Master of Social Work degree at Addis Ababa University

  In 2004, Anna realized the necessity to found Linking Lives so that others could join her in planning and raising funds to accomplish an even broader scope of projects to benefit the people of Ethiopia and other developing countries
  

Contributions to Linking Lives are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. Linking Lives is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization (EIN/tax ID number: 81-0662285).