Yema raising money to feed children in Africa amid pandemic

Their new downtown Tiburon clothing store is temporarily shuttered due to the coronavirus shelter-in-place order, but that doesn’t mean Yema Khalif and his partner, Hawi Awash, are abandoning their business’s mission of supporting children in their native Africa. The pair already donate 20 percent of every purchase of their “action fashion wear” brand Yema to help educate orphaned children in Ethiopia and the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya, where Khalif grew up. As the COVID-19 crisis worsened around the globe, Khalif and Awash decided to redirect a portion of their set-aside to help deliver food and hygiene supplies to about 130 families in Kibera. Now they’re thinking even bigger. Khalif and Awash have launched a GoFundMe with the goal of raising money to provide daily lunch to more than 600 children living on the streets of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, through early June.

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