Drawing from the lessons that were drawn from implementing education projects in both Amhara and Oromiya regions, the launching of CHADET’s girls’ education project was largely influenced by the intention to address the following problems:
- Low value attached to girls’ education by families and communities,
- Inability of parents to meet additional education-related costs (books, food and uniforms),
- Unfriendly, unsafe, un-stimulating and poorly-resourced school environments where boys dominate,
- Low teachers’ motivation and skills to support girls to acquire education which is empowering and appropriate,
- Weak coordination between schools, education offices, and local community and child protection structures to assure entry and retention of marginalised girls into good quality education.
To address these problems, CHADET, in collaboration with ChildHope, developed a proposal and secured funding from the Department for International Development (UKAID). The project enabled CHADET to provide support for about 18,000 girls who are at risk of migration and early marriage, trapped with domestic labour and others who are street connected. This is the second phase of the project and the emphasis is on preparing girls to transition through the education system, increasing their number of years in school. The project is being implemented in 77 schools and the key areas of work include the following:
- Improving teaching quality through training and mentoring of teachers to help them practice a student centered teaching;
- Providing all project girls including girls with disabilities with scholastic materials, assistive devices and sanitary pads to increase girls’ motivation and commitment to attending schools;
- Improving learning outcomes and transition rates for girls through various activities including organizing tutorials to prepare girls for national exams; arranging sexual and reproductive health education and meeting additional costs of accommodation, travel expenses, school fees when girls leave their homes for secondary school education;
- Increasing girls’ self esteem though life skill education and creation of safe-spaces in the schools.
Midline evaluation results of the GEC project showed that:
- Girls have shown improvement in learning outcomes of literacy and numeracy
- Girls in the girls’ clubs who have been attended life skills sessions have shown improved learning outcomes
- Teaching quality have improved
Project Reports for 2020 and 2021
GEC-T Endline Evaluation- 2021