Every girl deserves an education. If we Let Girls Learn, this is how they can change the world!
Peace Corps Volunteers like Allison partner with local communities to bring education and discussions about gender equality to rural areas in Ethiopia.
To learn more about Let Girls Learn and how you can get involved, visit: letgirlslearn.peacecorps.gov
ሴት ልጅ መማር ይገባታል:: ሴቶች ቢማሩ አለምን እንዲህ መቀየር ይችላሉ::
እንደ አሊሰን ያሉ የፒስ ኮር በጎ ፈቃደኞች በገጥሯ የኢትዮጵያ ክፍል ስለጾታ እኩለነት በማስተማርና በመወያየት ክህብረተሰቡ ጋር ይሰራሉ::
ስለ “Let Girls Learn” የበለጠ ለማወቅና ለመሳተፍ ይህን አድራሻ ይጠቀሙ – Letgirlslearn.peacecorps.gov
Background – The Project Context
My friend John finally made it to Ethiopia! After 3 years abroad, one of my best friends came for an overdue visit. Over the past 3 years, John’s video and music production business, Amber Mountain Studios, has really taken off so we wanted to tie in a little video work to his trip. In order to get a little practice shooting high quality video footage, justify part of the trip as “work”, and to have a little fun along the way, John brought along his camera kit to offer a little pro bono work for a good cause. After some brainstorming we decided to focus our efforts on the Let Girls Learn initiative.
Recently Peace Corps launched a new initiative called “Let Girls Learn.” As it stands now, this new collaboration between the Peace Corps and Michelle Obama’s Office in the White House, is pretty nebulous. The goals are broad and the exact impact on Volunteer activities (besides funding opportunities) is yet to be revealed. But what the LGL movement has done extremely well so far is shed light on a vitally important issue: educating girls around the world. LGL brought a lot of great awareness and press to a critical issue that the Peace Corps has been working on consistently for the past 54 years. There are celebrity videos online, President Obama is addressing LGL in speeches and PR videos, social media blew up with #LGL hashtags, stories, and photos, and there are a few shiny new .gov websites online.
Peace Corps Ethiopia is one of the Let Girls Learn implementing countries and many of our Volunteers are passionately working to address gender equality both inside and outside of the classroom. Over the past 3 years I’ve seen some incredible projects including summer camps, gender summits, and classroom discussions aimed at addressing gender equality. More importantly I’ve seen some incredible personal friendship formed. Many of our Female Volunteers develop deep bonds with local women and girls, encouraging them to pursue their education and dream big in a country where women and girls often face extremely difficult obstacles. You can read blogs from many many many many Volunteers about their personal relationships, but here’s one of my favorite stories from a Volunteer. Leslye wrote this story after thinking back on her two years of service. In the end, after two years of formal trainings, classes, and work, she defined the greatest success of her Peace Corps service as the relationship she developed with Shibere, her neighbor’s housekeeper. Leslye explains:
Shibere moved from a rural village to my town where she now works tirelessly for my neighbor. She spends her days tending to a three-year-old boy and taking care of housework.
She is kind, perceptive, thoughtful, and smart. She is an absolute joy to be around. She answers all my questions about cooking, cleaning, and compound living. She is my cultural compass and my best friend. She has an ability to effortlessly communicate with me in broken Amharic and her ability to cross-culturally empathize and understand my emotions is unparalleled by even my closest Ethiopian friends who speak good English.
More than anything, Shibere brought meaning to my work. Though she’s never attended any of my trainings, English clubs or secondary projects, she’s had the single greatest impact on my motivation to do the best work I can at site. Not only has she helped guide my work as a PCV, but she has also helped me discover my passion for a career in gender development and helping empower women and girls around the world. She is a snapshot of hundreds of thousands of girls who do not have the opportunity to go to school and who have low self-confidence. Shibere has taught me resilience and compassion even in the face of unimaginable adversity.
The statistics describing gender (in)equality in Ethiopia are pretty unsettling:
- In 2013, Only 1 in 3 girls attend secondary school
- In 2011, 41% of females aged 20-24 reported being married by age 18
- In 2009, 13% of Girls in Ethiopia were married by abduction
- In 2011, 64% of adolescent girls believe that wife beating is justified under certain circumstances
- 12% of girls between the ages of 15-19 are already mothers with their first child
- Unemployment rates are almost three times higher for young females than for young males
- 84% of children are engaged in activities that could be regarded as child labour
- Girls under 15 are three times more likely to fetch water than boys of the same age
So the need for improving gender equality is obviously present.
The good news is that things are changing! There are many organizations, both foreign and domestic, working in Ethiopia to promote gender equality. The Peace Corps is one of them; all our Volunteers are trained on gender equality and the importance of educating girls. The federal government fully endorses encouraging gender equality, although implementing it is another – much more difficult – story. There is affirmative action in the schools and universities to encourage more girls to stay in school. Every Ethiopian town has an office of “Women’s Affairs.”
But, as the recent numbers indicate, there’s still a lot to be done…
One Volunteer’s Response
Allison Adams, a Volunteer in the Oromia region, contacted me requesting some help photographing her girls club a few months ago. I saw this as a perfect opportunity for John and I and encouraged Allison to further develop her vision. She ran with it, designing and implementing an intense month long program in her town. She organized a club called “Project Girl” for about 15 students, age 10 to 17, from various backgrounds in her small town in rural Ethiopia. They met Monday through Friday for a few hours each day to “discuss personal experiences and develop skills that would help them discover existing inner strength and foster the confidence to achieve their future goals.” Allison further explains: “Each week of class focused on different topics that personally affect participants at a community, country, and global level.” The topics included:
- Week 1: Leadership
- Week 2: “Girl Rising” Film and Discussion
- Week 3: Poverty, Child Marriage, Gender-based Violence
- Week 4: Education
- Week 5: Let Girls Learn Video Project!
To measure the success of the program, girls took a pre-test on the first day of class and the same post-test after the program had closed. The test asked questions about their personal lives, dreams and aspiration, as well as questions covering material discussed in class. Girls also kept personal journals, answering a new question each day from the class topic. 100% of participants showed improvement in the areas of self-confidence and awareness of global issues such as poverty, gender-based marriage, and child marriage in their own community.
I think it’s incredible that Allison put in the work preceding our visit thus ensuring that the video we filmed represents a real project and real students. This wasn’t just a quick and shallow photo op. But more importantly Allison’s month of preparation and work were the response to a very real need!
Allison explains: “The need for Project Girl rose from the number of my female students that began dropping out of school to work in their homes and help provide for their families. More than enough times my female students would come to me in tears from being told by their families that they couldn’t continue to secondary school or even finish primary school so that they could help raise their siblings and cook and clean in their homes. These girls themselves asked for a way to express the importance of education to their families. […] These lessons aren’t just ideas but they are real things that apply to every girl in Ethiopia.”
“Project Girl helped me realize that I can preach to girls the importance of being a leader all I want, but if I don’t give them the tools to build confidence to be their own leaders first, the knowledge means nothing.”
“Quiet on the Set!” – A full day of production in Arsi Robe
John and I arrived with Deneke, one of our Peace Corps drivers, on Thursday afternoon. We spent the rest of the afternoon strategizing, planning, and scouting the school in preparation for the shoot.
On Friday afternoon we started production. The girls began to arrive. Allison told us they wouldn’t be shy, since she had been working with them for over a month, and they weren’t, but we still eased into filming with a few games. The girls blew me away with their charisma, public speaking abilities, and leadership.
Next we had the students write personal statements in response to “we are…” This project was part of an international photo call from Peace Corps. They wanted to compile photos of girls all around the world responding to the same prompt in order to raise awareness and build solidarity. The photos offered a great way to get the girls used to being in front of the camera. The photos turned out great!
Next we launched into the main filming. Allison’s original vision was to have girls respond to the prompt, “If you let girls learn, I will…” She worked with them over the month to refine lofty and often generic statements into poignant personal statements reflecting the true values and interests of each individual. These were incredibly powerful and really show the potential of gender equality in education. Here are a few of their responses to “If you let girls learn, I will…”
- Become a writer and help young girls with my words
- Support and encourage girls without families to be strong
- Encourage other girls to go to school
- Become a doctor and help people who can’t afford medicine
- Teach about the dangers of child marriage
- Teach MY family the importance of education
- Become an astronomer and make new discoveries for Ethiopia
- Advise older generations and stop harmful traditions
- Become a scientist and develop cures so young children can stop dying
- Advise other girls about the importance of university
- Teach other girls to get married when THEY are ready
It was a struggle to get all the footage and audio we needed in one afternoon, but thanks to Allison’s preparations, the leadership and maturity of her students, guidance from a great Peace Corps counterpart Teacher Asrat, and the help of others, we were able to finish just before sundown.
A few photos from the shoot:
Here are some screenshots from the big RED camera:
The next day we returned to Addis Ababa and John eventually returned to the States for a week of post-production. After seeing too many depressing and sad development videos, we really wanted to focus on the positivity that this story tells! These students are making a difference in Ethiopia, one step at a time. We need to all be thankful and appreciative of supportive teachers, local leaders, and energetic students who this video is intended to inspire and encourage. After a few drafts, John created a wonderful video that we hope to share around Ethiopia and the world!
I talked to Allison yesterday and she said the video went “viral” in town. Everyone’s talking about it and the girls love it, although they think it should have been an hour instead of 2 minutes. She said people kept telling her that they had no idea these girls held these aspirations and goals. Hearing that really made it hit home and showed me that this video is already making a difference right where we need it to in rural Ethiopia.
I hope others can continue to see this and discuss a message that I often take for granted: that everyone has the right to dream.
To learn more about Let Girls Learn and how you can get involved visit: https://letgirlslearn.peacecorps.gov/
Fotos 
Reblogged this on 27 Months of Sunshine and commented:
An amazing post by my friend Forrest about the work he did to document a Let Girls Learn project in Ethiopia
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Wonderful Fo! And John! Hope springs eternal–and now, too, for the girls of Ethiopia.
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