By Heran Abebe | Senior Gender Advisor, Pathfinder International ET
BACKGROUND
GlobalGiving donors have generously supported Pathfinder International’s project to empower women and girls in Ethiopia by providing scholarships for their continued education to mitigate their risk of dropping out and to build their life and leadership skills. Since May 2008, Pathfinder has recruited 104 female students from poor families through its GlobalGiving project, Educate and Empower 800 Ethiopian Girls. In total, 77 girls from Addis Ababa and 27 girls from the Amhara region have received scholarship assistance and orientation on youth reproductive health issues.
UPDATE
During this reporting period, thanks to the generosity of our GlobalGiving donors, eight of our existing secondary school students in Addis Ababa were given scholarship extensions to continue their education and avoid dropout.
In addition, three-day trainings in adolescent sexual and reproductive health were conducted for 31 girls in the Dera Woreda of the Amhara region. The goal of these trainings was to educate and train peer educators who can become mentors in their own communities. The trainee students were from two local high schools, with 20 of them being scholarship beneficiaries of Pathfinder’s GlobalGiving project. These trained adolescents will go into their communities as peer educators who will conduct outreach on topics like basic sexual and reproductive health information, anatomy and physiology of the reproductive system, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, life skills, gender, and harmful traditional practices. Other topics of interest were discussed at the trainings such as Pathfinder’s scholarship project, their academic performance, and strengthening the girls’ clubs. As a result, the girls witnessed an increase in their sexual and reproductive health knowledge and made a commitment to serve their peers in sharing what they learned from the training.
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