Empowering Women and Educating Families

As you know, I like to write in the dark. It helps pass the long nights without electricity which are now every other day. Ethiopia relies on hydroelectric power and without rain during the short rainy season, we find ourselves in this dim predicament. Today, though, I am writing from the well-lit and air-conditioned Sheraton lobby sipping a glass of white wine and considering how many bar snacks I can reasonably fold into a napkin for later. I already have a muffin and two imported Red Delicious apples in my purse.

I found my middle-ground since I last wrote: laps at the hotel pool followed by the city’s only veggie burger. This is it. The one place that lets me pretend I haven’t just seen what I did. The place that lets me forget that rat running across my foot on a home visit to a client in her mud hut. It is the place where I try to erase memories of sick children with curable disease who will die because they are poor; where I put overwhelming poverty in a box. Even with this retreat, I still often go home and cry. My emotions are not my own in Ethiopia .

Last week was spent with a small delegation of Board members from Italy ’s Rita Levi Montalcini foundation. Montalcini, the 99-year old Nobel Peace Prize recipient used her prize money to establish a foundation dedicated to empowering African women through education. The foundation grants JDC funds to maintain full-ride scholarships each year for 15 girls from no or low income rural families to attend the four-year college at Unity University College (UUC) in Addis. Because they have a harder adjustment than most students, “Project for the Future” also includes a one-year preparatory program that helps the girls catch up with their classmates in English (all university classes are taught in English in the country), math and science.

I had lunch with three recent graduates. One is a nurse, another in marketing and the third in government. From large families with up to ten siblings, some also orphaned, these young women were the first in their family to attend college. Now employed, they are the primary bread-winners in their family. They invited their younger and older siblings to live with them in Addis; they are paying for their tuition in order to provide them with the same educational opportunities they were afforded in hopes of creating a better future for their families.

Ethiopian girls make up less than 25% of students in higher education because they marry early and almost always have more difficult economic situations than their male counterparts. Also, they receive less than 10% of government scholarships, making this program even more important. UUC does its part by ensuring an even male to female student body (out of 8,000 undergraduate/graduate students) and assigning a special “Project for the Future” office to work with our girls.

It is often said that when you educate a woman, you educate an entire family. This couldn’t be closer to the truth. It is one of the most beautiful projects here - full of optimism and another escape that fills me with hope.