Ethiopia

In ETHIOPIA Batonga is:

Granting scholarships: In Addis Ababa, Batonga, in collaboration with a local charity, Hope for Children, has created a unique program that supports college education for girls orphaned by AIDS.  Scholarship recipients are enrolled in various university programs including nursing and law. Each scholarship includes annual course fees, uniforms, books and materials and a transportation and food stipend.  Batonga supports each recipient until she has successfully completed her courses. Currently, Batonga provides 17 girls with annual scholarships.

Batonga is also supporting Hope for Children’s Youth Learning Center in Addis Ababa.  The center offers after school tutoring programs and summer learning programs. Last year, Batonga filled the Youth Learning Center’s library with 5,000 books, providing the over 300 children who regularly attend classes there with access to the necessary tools for learning. Batonga also donated 5,000 books to a variety of organizations and schools including the new library at Project Mercy in Butajira, the Agazi High School and the community center and public library in Adigrat/Tigray.

Batonga is also partnering with the Gemini Foundation in Ethiopia to provide educational support for girls from Gemini families, which are destitute families with twins living in the slums of Addis Ababa. Batonga will provide school supplies to 31 girls attending universities in Ethiopia and 500 girls attending school in Addis Ababa.

Providing microloans: Batonga’s newest project, in partnership with Mercy Corps, is titled PROSPER, which stands for Promoting Sustainable Partnerships for Economic Recovery. PROSPER is a program that  targets vulnerable communities in the Konso and Derashe districts of Ethiopia. Its objective is to empower marginalized women to enable girls to complete their secondary school education and improve their well-being.

As an incentive to keep the girl in secondary school, mothers/female care givers will be provided with a loan of up to $150 linked to the secondary school enrollment of the girl.  The profits that the mothers make from their loan will be used to expand their income generating activities and continue payments for the costs associated with sending their daughters to school.

The project will provide secondary school scholarships for 140 students.  In addition the project will support up to 50 girls in continued vocational education and apprenticeship opportunities after graduation. Each girl will be provided with $30 per month for a period of 10 months to cover daily subsistence and transportation costs.

The project will also place emphasis on encouraging parents to keep their daughters in school through secondary education. Awareness raising strategies will be devised in consultation with the respective Woreda education offices and special events will be organized to bring together parents of children on a regular basis to discuss their income generating activities, positive changes in their households and performance of their children.

In-country NGO partners: Hope for Children , Gemini Foundation and Mercy Corps

Background

Ethiopia, with a population of over 90 million, is the second most populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, but it is also one of the world’s poorest. At US $130, Ethiopia’s per capita GDP is only about a fifth of the Sub-Saharan average according to the World Bank.

Ethiopia is unique among African countries. Known today as the birthplace of humanity with the discovery of a 4 million year-old hominid skull, it has had an unbroken monarchial line going back 5000 years (with a brief break during WWII) that lasted until the last King was executed in 1982. While there were occasional upheavals throughout its long history, the political instability of recent times was the direct cause of the current poor infrastructure and educational attainment levels.

Ethiopia consists of 11 regions, and the central government has encouraged regional and local authorities to take on a greater role in the education system. Ethiopia’s efforts to increase school enrollment and reach the UN’s Millennium Development Goals have produced mixed results. The country’s poor learning environment is reflected in student-teacher ratios exceeding 100 to 1 and single classes with as many as 200 children jammed together on a dirt floor. This situation has worsened since compulsory school fees were dropped and enrollments increased, because the supply of newly trained teachers and newly built classrooms has not kept pace with the increased number of students.

Other factors contributing to teacher shortages and school access include HIV/AIDS, which has struck down many teachers and parents and required some AIDS orphans to drop out of school. Rates in some regions are thought to be as high as 20 percent of the population living with HIV/AIDS.

Batonga’s efforts in Ethiopia focus on both school construction as well as scholarships for girls, and will include AIDS orphans.