Rehabilitation of 64 Vulnerable Women in Ethiopia

We are still looking for additional funding to run this project to full capacity but this doesn't mean that we are not helpoing vulnerable women at this time. We are helping at a lower capacity. Currently we are awaiting the approval of five women who are being selected by women affairs and we will assist them by means of counseling and economoc empowerment as well as small business skills training.

But in the meantime we have one young 19 year old girl who has been raped by a family member and this resulted into a pregnancy....she tried to terminate this pregnancy in secret but needed parental approval for this...it meant she had to tell what had happened to her...by the time she had sorted out that problem she was to far advanced in her pregnancy and was referred to another hospital where they tried to induce an early labor, she was between 6 and 7 months at that time. The very premature baby was born alive, much to the horror of the young mother. Some people in the hospital had agreed that she could leave her baby behind and go home...that was what she did, trying to ignore what had happened to her, working and starting cooking classes. The baby kept thriving and spent around 75 days in the intensive care. Around that time a doctor in the hospital found out what the hospital staff had done and greatly opposed the idea of baby abandonment. So he traced the mother and turned up with the baby, a police officer, a nurse and they  all went to social services office to deal with thie problem...apparently there was a lot of arguing going on as especially the grandmother of the baby was greatly opposed to this baby and she expressed interest in killing the baby as otherwise the family may kill her and the mother...a solution was not reached and finally we were called.... We can't take a baby when there is a mother on the scene and as this was an ongoing crisis situation we decided to take both baby, motehr and grandmother for the nigh so everyone could calm down....we had to keep mother and baby seperate as we were afraid that they may try to kill the baby or abandon the baby. We had a guard in front of granmother and mother's room. The next morning we did extensive counselling and finally the mother agreed to stay with the baby and with us. For the mother we got women's affairs and the police involved and after a lot of drama she was taken to her home with police follow-up. The mother of the baby was severly depressed and we got the psychiatrist in to prescribe her some anti-depressants. We have been doing intensive counselling with the mother and we are currently at the point that she has accepted her baby and is caring for her little girl. Tomorrow she will start cooking classes for six months and working in our kitchen as assistant to the cook. For the time being we will keep this mother and baby in our residential setting for abandoned children, the long-term plan is that mother and baby develop a strong bond and eventually will be able to live independent from us with the mother being able to work as a cook somewhere. We hope that our intervention will work to keep mother and baby together and we thank everyone who has contributed to this project for helping us assist this traumatized young mother and her baby!