Berhane Hewan: Reducing Child Marriage in Ethiopia

Summary

The Berhane Hewan project promotes education and helps prevent girls from becoming child brides by providing an incentive – a $25 sheep – to families who commit to keeping their girls in school.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

In Ethiopia’s Amhara region, girls face tremendous challenges – 43% of girls marry before age 15 and more than 45% of 15 to 19 year olds cannot read at all. The project has enabled more than 11,000 girls to stay in school and delay marriage. Participating girls are more likely than non-participants to remain unmarried and stay in school, and they know more about sexual and reproductive health. Married girls in the sister program are nearly 3 times more likely than others to use family planning.

How will this project solve this problem?

This project teaches the girls literacy, life skills, health and HIV education, and how to save money. Girls also meet outside of schools in “girl groups” to take part in conversations on early marriage and sexual and reproductive health issues.

Potential Long Term Impact

An investment of $4.5 to $5 million a year could reach 10 percent of 2 mill girls, enabling them to delay marriage, become educated, learn skills and break the chain of

Project Message

“Our parents did not have enough means to buy us educational materials; we did not get education. Our fate used to be being married early. But since the project started this problem has been solved.”
- Yideneku Chanie, 12-year-old Berhane Hewan participant

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).

Resources

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