We have more in common than what divides us. And if we can see each other clearly, the work we do, the hopes we carry, the future we share, we will find our way back to each other. And that is how we rebuild Tigray.
That is the belief behind everything you will read on this site.
We are an ancient people. Our history stretches back thousands of years. Through the Kingdom of Aksum. Through the rock-hewn churches of the Geralta mountains. Through centuries of poetry, faith, resistance, and renewal. We are the people of 13 months of sunshine. We are the people who say there are no mountains we would not climb, no rivers we would not cross.
And yet.
The Tigray we carry in our hearts is not the Tigray that exists today.
In November 2020, a war was waged on our people. What followed was devastation on a scale that most of the world still does not understand. Hundreds of thousands killed. Millions displaced. Women and girls subjected to weaponized sexual violence so systematic that international commissions have called it genocide. Ancient heritage sites bombed and looted, not as collateral damage, but as cultural erasure. Hospitals destroyed. Schools shuttered. Telecommunications severed so that the world could not see and our families could not speak.
A cessation of hostilities was signed in Pretoria in November 2022. But the peace it promised has been incomplete. Eritrean forces remain on Tigrayan soil. Over 878,000 of our people are still displaced from their homes. Western Tigray remains occupied. No one has been held accountable. And now, as factions within our own leadership fracture and regional tensions rise, the threat of another war grows by the day.
The humanitarian needs left by this war will take decades to address. This is not a short-term emergency. This is generational work.
And the diaspora, the millions of us scattered across continents, we are the ones with the freedom, the resources, and the reach to act.
But we are disconnected.
The diaspora is divided. Between those with money and those without it. Between those in power and those who want it. Between the old who cling to outdated parts of the culture and the youth who want to make things better.
The state of Tigray itself is divided. We can't seem to agree with ourselves, for many of the same reasons. Nepotism. Corruption. The quiet politics of self-interest. Our government is split between those wanting to secede and those who aspire for power within Ethiopia.
We can't seem to agree enough to move together. Too many agendas, personal and organizational, pulling in different directions.
I have watched meetings where dozens of organizations, people who share the same goals, lose hours to reactive arguments that could have been resolved with a simple conversation. Energy that should go toward the work goes instead toward the disagreement. And over time, the people willing to do the work grow fewer, because the obstacles never seem to come from the people doing it.
It is discouraging. I will not pretend otherwise.
But we all agree on a core premise.
We want Tigray to be a safe, hospitable, and evergreen place. The Tigray we grew up in, learned about, or have dreamed of.
This starts by finding common ground amongst each other.
A personal agenda be damned when it means the safety of young women.
A political agenda be damned when it means the health of the elderly who created us.
An organisational agenda be damned when it means the future of the youth can be promising and as bright as our 13 months of sunshine.
We are not the first diaspora to face this.
There are communities that have followed the tried and true playbook to keeping their motherland and diaspora alive and well. The Koreans. The Armenians. The Indians. And whatever your personal thoughts are on Israel — the Jewish diaspora.
They did not wait for permission. They did not wait for perfect unity. They started with what they had in common and built from there.
The Armenians, after the genocide of 1915, built the Armenian National Committee of America. An advocacy organization that now operates across sixty chapters, holds annual lobbying days in Congress, and spent decades pushing until the United States formally recognized the Armenian Genocide. They built the Armenian General Benevolent Union, which today serves half a million Armenians in over thirty countries through schools, language programs, youth camps, professional networks, and homeland trips. All designed to ensure that no generation of Armenians, no matter how far from the homeland, loses their language, their culture, or their identity.
The Koreans, after a war that left their country poorer than Haiti or Ethiopia, built diaspora networks that fueled what the world now calls the Miracle on the Han River. Korean communities abroad didn't just send money home. They invested. They traded. They built businesses that bridged their new countries and their homeland. Korean communities in the United States alone boosted trade between the two countries by as much as 20 percent. Their government created formal institutions to channel diaspora talent back to Korea, reversing the brain drain and turning scattered communities into an economic engine.
These diasporas understood something we have not yet fully embraced: you build the infrastructure in peacetime so it is ready when crisis comes. You do not try to build a coalition in the middle of an emergency. You build it before the emergency, and it is there when you need it.
We are trying to build ours in the middle of the fire. But it is not too late.
The work is already happening.
The work is not new.
Long before the war, people across the diaspora were building community associations, hosting cultural events, creating spaces for Tigrayans to find each other in cities far from home. Organizations like the Union of Tigrayans in North America, local Tigray community associations in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Minnesota, and elsewhere, the Tegaru Professionals Network and the Tigray Communities Forum that launched it. This work was happening. But it was scattered, under-supported, and often invisible to anyone outside the immediate circle doing it.
The war changed the scale. It brought a wave of people to action and created new organizations built for advocacy and crisis response. Omna Tigray. Security and Justice for Tigrayans. The Tigray Action Committee. The Health Professionals Network for Tigray. Mekete Tigray UK and its variations across Europe. The Tigray Advocacy and Development Association. The Global Society of Tigray Scholars and Professionals. The Tigray Youth Network. Associations of Tigrayans in Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Norway, and more.
Together, they have lobbied for international investigations, organized protests on multiple continents, briefed congressional offices, provided direct financial assistance to displaced families, hosted cultural gatherings that keep our identity alive, and spoke the truth when the world looked away.
But urgency fades. And the harder, quieter work is what happens when there is no emergency forcing us to connect. Not just for the people back home in the immediacy, but for ourselves. For the generations growing up in the diaspora who risk losing their language, their traditions, their sense of who they are. The war reminded us that we need each other. The question is whether we can remember that when the crisis is not on our doorstep.
The infrastructure exists in fragments. Dozens of organizations across continents, each doing important, often invisible, work.
We should be doing more to hold each other up, for the work we do is tiresome and thankless. It is without pay, but with the hope of a rebuilt Tigray.
No longer do any of us wish for Tigray to be rebuilt.
We simply wish it to be built — and thriving of its own accord.
We called this platform Rebuild Tigray because that is where the work starts. But the destination is not restoration. We are not trying to go back. We are looking for the future, while keeping our history. We want to move past what has held us back and carry our history finally into the future.
That starts with recognizing what we have in common with each other and focusing on what actually matters:
The political stability of the land. Doing what it takes to make sure the people in the land are well.
The health and wellbeing of her people.
The education and infrastructure of the land.
And the togetherness of the diaspora, through which we can accomplish so many things related to those core issues.
That last one, togetherness, is the one I can affect the most.
This is not about me. Who I am, what I do for a living, where I live — none of that matters. What matters is the decision to build a stage and try to bring people together. What matters is what happens on that stage.
What I can do is this: highlight those in the diaspora — individuals and their organizations — and bring their stories and their words to the people directly. They are the ones doing the tiresome work on the core issues. They are the ones who deserve to be seen.
I believe that visibility creates empathy. That empathy creates common ground. And that common ground creates collaboration. This is not a perhaps. This is the bet.
By giving a glimpse of their work, unblemished and without agenda, we can see what drives the people doing this work. We can realize that we share more than we thought. And from that common ground, more voices, more hands, more ears, and more brains will find their way to the right causes.
That will either bring the people already doing this work closer together, or it will inspire new people to join them.
Either way, we move closer to the common goal we all share: a rebuilt and thriving Tigray.
This is what Rebuild Tigray is.
It is not a news outlet. It is not a political organization. It is not asking for your donations.
It is a lens. Pointed at the people in this diaspora who are already doing the work, so that others might find them, learn from them, join them, or simply feel less alone in caring. Think of it as an aggregator of the great things happening across the diaspora. The work, the people, the stories. All in one place, with no spin and no agenda.
A directory of the organizations rebuilding Tigray, in their own words.
A space for their stories, interviews, and perspectives on what matters.
A gallery of what we are fighting for — the land, the people, the future.
I regret and despise thinking of a future where the Tigrayan diaspora allowed itself to squabble and bicker itself into irrelevance.
May that never happen.
My future children deserve better. So do yours.
There are no mountains we would not climb, and no rivers we would not cross.
ዘይንድይቦ ጎቦ ዘይንሰግሮ ሩባ