We approach the challenges in rural Oromia with community partnership, quality construction, and support for girls.
Many reasons contribute to poor school attendance in rural Oromia, the most prevalent among those are:
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Child labor as a necessity to assure family’s economic survival
By the age of ten, nearly all children are involved in some form of work, averaging almost 30 hours per week.
Rural adolescents enrolled in school miss approximately 1/3rd of total school days.
Boys are more likely to engage in herding and farm work.
Girls often take on household chores and domestic duties.
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Many children have to walk an average of 3- 5 kilometers to and from school regardless of weather
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Schools on the countryside are often in extremely poor condition with dark and mold infested rooms
Frequently children have to sit on the ground in overcrowded class rooms
Lack of furniture
Lack of infrastructure such as electricity or running water
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The average ratio of teachers to students is between 1:50 – 1:60
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Scarcity of text books and other reading and educational material, especially for beginning readers
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Due to cultural sensitivities associated with menstruation, teenage girls frequently miss additional school time.
A UNICEF study found that more than 50% of schoolgirls in rural Ethiopia miss 1–4 days of school per month due to menstruation.
Lack of menstrual hygiene products, inadequate sanitation, and stigma are major causes of school absenteeism among adolescent girls.
Our Approach
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A committee consisting of village elders, local authorities, school directors and parents will discuss details of the need for school buildings, and agree on a contract with EVS and the building contractor
Involve local community in building process to create a sense of ownership
We use local craftsmen to build furniture, ie. benches, tables and shelves, in an effort to involve community and to provide income for local businesses.
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Each new school will have a dedicated library room equipped with shelves, desks, and chairs
For small kindergarten children, we bought prefabricated furniture in local markets.
We provide textbooks if not available through governmental sources
We provide extracurricular textbooks for beginning readers
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Provide adequate teaching material
Support for individual students
Provide afterschool tutoring program 3 days per week for 2 hours for all students who want to attend, given by teachers who earn additional salary paid by EVS. We support all six of our schools this way.
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EVS has now incorporated the concept of a separate “girls’ room” into the planning for new school construction, and we also started adding these rooms to some of the existing schools.
These rooms are equipped with furniture, a bed, and plastic containers for girls to be able to wash their reusable menstrual pads.
Single-use menstruation pads are generally not available and affordable for women and girls in rural areas started a menstruation pad program in 2019, initially with pads purchased from Freweini Mebrahtu, who was honored as the CNN person of the year in 2019 for her dedication to improving access to education and menstrual health for Ethiopian girls.
Since 2020, EVS has employed a local seamstress, provided a sewing machine and an office, and menstruation pad kits are now locally produced with materials brought in from markets in Addis Ababa. These kits contain reusable washable pads and underwear.
These kits are very well accepted by the girls, and in the meantime their mothers ask for kits for their own use as well.
In the meantime, about 1600 kits have been distributed to the girls in “our” schools
Girls' room
Girls holding pads
Girls room pad washing containers
Lidia arranging menstruation kits
Lidia at sewing machine
Girls’ pads from Freweini Mebrahtu
Girls in girls’ room