Ehume is a small village in Nigeria.  It is located in the Obowu local government area of Imo State.  According to history, Obowu had 14 sons, and Ehume was the first son.  In Obowu, Ehume is the "Okpara," a term used in Igbo Culture to recognize the first son.  The first daughter is connoted by "Ada."  These two children are the most respected and honored in Igbo Culture.  They usually have the rights in the family that rivals those of other children.  This very position explains the importance of Ehume as a town in Obowu.  The Ehume sons are endlessly challenged to provide leadership and show other good examples.  As the old culture is fast giving way to new formal culture, the need to show a new kind of leadership that revolves around education has become urgent and necessary.

Ehume is not just poor.  It is abjectly poor.  Its schools are shreds of ruin from the Nigerian-Biafran war.  As the last bastion of this murderous civil war, Ehume today remains a monument of the effects of that civil war.  Almost all educated children of Ehume up until 1968 were either killed or very well destabilized in the 1967 to 1970 hostilities.  Those who survived were overwhelmed with responsibilities that left them as hopeless and useless as those they were seeking to help.

Today, the situation is far better that in 1970, as at least one secondary school has finally been built - a joint venture with a neighboring village.  Of the two functional elementary schools before 1967, only one has been "rehabilitated."  This means it has a roof over the head and a floor under the feet with a cement or concrete wall board as a chalk board.  Students must pay tuition to attend.  The school fees are used to purchase basic items of need to keep the place open.  As the collected fees are never sufficient for any project, the headmaster can do only so much to ensure that reading, writing, and arithmetic are available to the students.

Recent news from Ehume is that the secondary and primary schools have leaky roofs and broken floors.  They lack everything that is basic to knowledge acquisition.  The few members of the Ehume Clan in the USA have become a lifeline for the needs of the town.  Though completely overwhelmed, we are proud to say we have taken an important collective first step by chartering the Ehume Foundation.