Basic Education in Ethiopia - World Learning for International Development

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World Learning For International Development Supporting Basic Education In Ethiopia

Photo. For rural Ethiopian children fortunate enough to attend school, the day usually begins and ends with a walk of several kilometers. For the small minority of students who are girls older than age 10, the walk brings a particular peril: in many poor communities, young girls are abducted on behalf of a would-be bridegroom who is unable to afford the traditional bride price and so resorts instead – with tacit consent from community leaders -- to abduction and often rape, after which the girl’s parents often view immediate marriage as the only honorable outcome. Further schooling becomes impossible.

Fear of such abduction, along with cultural or religious barriers to girls’ education and the practice of keeping girls at home to provide household help are the primary causes of low enrolment of girls in the rural Ethiopian schools where World Learning for International Development (WLID) is implementing the Community-Government Partnership Program in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The program addresses not only the obstacles to female enrolment, but also the troubling conditions under which learning must take place for both girls and boys:

Student/teacher ratios often exceeding 100:1 and single classes with as many as 200 children jammed together on the dirt floor;
Poor infrastructure, with classrooms constructed of sticks and mud with little light or ventilation, topped with metal roofing sheets that produce high heat in sunshine and deafening noise in rain, often without access either to latrines or to potable water; and
Lack of basic furnishings, including desks and chairs, as well as textbooks and other learning materials.

This poor learning environment has worsened in response to the Ethiopian government’s recent commitment to free and compulsory primary education for all Ethiopian children. Ethiopia’s commitment to universal schooling is praised by the international community as a step toward meeting the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals for education – primary school completion for all boys and girls, and elimination of gender disparity in both primary and secondary education by 2015. But as enrolments rise, the supply of trained teachers and the resources available to build new classrooms are stretched further and further. Other factors contributing to teacher shortages and school access include AIDS, which has struck down many teachers and parents and required AIDS orphans to drop out of school, and school fees, which are unaffordable for many families.

World Learning’s approach to addressing these problems is founded on our long experience demonstrating that poor communities can do a great deal to solve their own problems and further their children’s education – including making a substantial financial contribution -- with very modest assistance in organizing their initial efforts. The first task in Ethiopian communities with whom we work is to mobilize a community committee to help local parents and other community members understand that their village school belongs to them, and that they have both the right and the responsibility to do what they can to improve their children’s education. After the community group identifies its school’s greatest needs and articulates an action plan to meet these needs, World Learning provides a $300 matching grant. Typically, the first need is to build a new classroom, purchase desks and chairs, or construct a well or a latrine. Already, the first 400 schools out of a planned 1800 involved in the Community Government Partnership Program have raised, on average, four times the value of the seed grant.

Local contributions come in three forms:

Cash, often generated in part by children and teachers raising crops on school land and selling them in local market;
in-kind donations, including building materials and livestock for sale; and
labor contributed on workdays during which the entire community may turn out to raise a building frame of eucalyptus poles or to plaster the walls with a mixture of mud, dung and straw.

Photo. Schools become eligible for further grants at increased levels, once they successfully complete their own program of improvements and conduct a deeper needs analysis leading to a long-term strategy. By the time World Learning assistance ends, partner communities will be able to carry on with their community organizations and their own and external resource generation efforts to make the culture of school improvement fully sustainable.

The community groups also provide a local voice to advocate girls’ participation in education. Groups have met with local police, judges and elders to insist that they act strongly to prevent or punish abduction, and with individual families to encourage them to send their daughters to school and to provide their children with time and space for study at home. Formation of Girls’ Advisory Committees among community members has proven effective. While women’s participation in the community committees lags because of cultural barriers, World Learning’s grass-roots organizers are working with the communities and the local government officials to increase female participation in both the community and the teaching corps.

Photo. Community contributions and donations provided by World Learning from non-USAID sources currently account for 25% of the total program budget. Private supporters can help us advance community investments in simple but important school design improvements – devised, constructed and partially financed by the communities themselves -- to increase the space per child and improve ventilation, moderate temperatures and provide better light and rain protection in rural school buildings. World Learning’s special appeal is designed to help us – and more importantly, our partner communities in Ethiopia – to realize the dream of universal and high-quality education for all Ethiopian children. And as our experience demonstrates, each contribution not only makes a critical difference for one school and one community, but also helps all the communities where we work to remain involved in their children’s education for years to come.

How You Can Help!

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