How everything started

Daniel Bergman and his partner were exchange students in Addis Ababa at the Tikur Anbessa Hospital during their final semester of medical school. They lived a few blocks from the hospital at the Ras Hotel. Partway through their stay, a Swedish high school class checked into the hotel. Every year, their teacher took a trip to Ethiopia with the seniors. Daniel and his partner started talking to the teacher and were later invited to their graduation party, which they arranged at the hotel. A Swedish coffee importer named Seife Tuuloskorpi was also invited to the party. When he heard that Daniel and his partner were medical students, he asked if they could help him recruit doctors and nurses for a rehabilitation center called Cheshire, which he sponsored. They said, “That shouldn't be a problem.” When Daniel returned to Sweden and familiarized himself with the situation and began communicating with the people who ran Cheshire, it quickly became clear that they did not need doctors or nurses, but paramedics. No sooner said than done, the focus shifted to paramedics. Daniel returned to Addis Ababa and spoke with the management, as well as visiting the two clinics located in Addis Ababa and Menagesha. With the help of the student organization MACHA at Karolinska Institutet, Daniel drew up a plan to recruit and train two volunteer physiotherapists. The two volunteers would be tasked with participating in the rehabilitation activities at Menagesha to understand how they could potentially help. And how they would focus their collaboration if they did. Josefin and Sofia were the two brave volunteers who went down first, sponsored by coffee importer Seife. That was the start of Parachute Local.