Population Council Research that makes a difference

The status of girls in rural Ethiopia is arguably as low as that of any group in the world. Girls in Ethiopia are significantly less likely than Ethiopian boys to attend school, and they attain much lower levels of education when they do attend. Rural Ethiopian girls frequently are given in arranged marriages during childhood or early adolescence. These marriages often involve forced sexual initiation, early childbearing, and heightened risk of poor outcomes, including fistula. Despite the difficulties they face, there are few programs that focus specifically on these girls.

The goal of this project, funded by the Nike Foundation, is to expand and improve programs for rural girls in Ethiopia. The Population Council has assembled a team of the most energetic, committed practitioners of programming for rural girls in Ethiopia—a girls' programming "Brain Trust." Under the project, which began in October 2007, Brain Trust members make rotating site visits to rural programs for adolescent girls, identifying lessons learned and best practices from each program. The lessons learned include approaches to be avoided as well as strategies to be emulated. The best practices and lessons learned from the site visits will be packaged into a user-friendly toolkit that other practitioners can use to establish, expand, and/or improve programs for rural girls.

In addition to disseminating knowledge regarding programming for rural girls, identifying promising practices that other practitioners can adapt to their programs, and providing technical assistance to strengthen the projects visited, one of the major accomplishments of the site visits has been the development of stronger working relationships among Brain Trust members. The Brain Trust is working well as a team; its members are eager to help improve each other’s projects and are collaborating more closely outside of Brain Trust meetings. These closer working relationships enable Brain Trust members to more effectively advance the cause of rural girls in Ethiopia.

Members of the Brain Trust also were involved in planning two high-profile national workshops on programming for rural girls. In addition, the Brain Trust project has made small grants to two local organizations, Save Your Generation Ethiopia and Guraghe People’s Self-help Development Organization, to establish and expand innovative programs for rural girls.

In addition, a directory of programs for rural girls in Ethiopia (PDF) was compiled and is being disseminated. Its aim is to promote collaboration and coordination among organizations working with rural girls.

The Population Council expects that the efforts of Brain Trust members will boost the profile of rural girls in Ethiopia and increase the attention paid to the conditions they face, which, in turn, will result in additional funding for rural girls' programs and encourage more organizations to target efforts to this highly marginalized population.

The Brain Trust currently consists of 18 organizations. Eight are international and ten are local Ethiopian organizations: