Stories / News
Newsletter Updates
Education in Emergency
Marshet Begena
Eyob Mikias
Bitania Abebayehu
Rawa Endashaw
Newsletter Updates
3rd Quarterly Newsletter of 2023
4th Quarterly Newsletter of 2023
1st Quarterly Newsletter of 2024
2nd Quarterly Newsletter of 2024
Education in Emergency
Education in Emergency;
Fostering Peace Initiative
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been actively working in the Bakelo IDP center in Debrebirhan as a core component of its peace-building initiatives. Upon the commencement of our intervention, numerous challenges surfaced, primarily stemming from existing conflicts between the host community and the newly arrived internally displaced persons (IDP). These tensions were rooted in issues surrounding space, religious and language differences, and the host community’s reluctance to accept IDPs due to resource limitations and other concerns. These challenges were particularly evident within the school environment, where host community parents contributed to the conflict over scarce resources and insufficient school facilities, making it difficult to accommodate the growing number of IDP students.
Faced with these gaps and tensions, ESD’s Devised Peace Initiative strategies to deal with these conflict situations include dialogs, community conversations for adults, sports, and games for children. ESD took proactive steps to facilitate dialogue between the host community and IDP groups. Through continuous discussions and negotiations, the peace initiative gradually gained traction, leading to mutual understanding and cooperation between the IDP community and host community. A formal agreement was established between the host community and the IDPs, which included community-driven efforts to pool resources and In addition, ESD worked diligently to secure funding from a donor, which facilitated the construction of additional classrooms to accommodate IDP schoolchildren across six schools in the Debrebirhan city administration and North Shoa Zone.
This collaborative effort has significantly contributed to creating an inclusive educational environment, fostering peace and unity within the community.
Marshet Begena
Marshet Begena
Hi, my name is Marshet Begena, and I am a 27-year-old woman born in Hawassa. I was unemployed and struggling financially. It was a tough time for me until I discovered ESD’s professional hairdressing training program.
I enrolled in the program and completed three months of training at Solomon Abegaz Beauty Training Institute. With the skills I learned, I launched a beauty salon business with my friends. We offer a variety of services, including hair styling, Shuruba/braid, pedicures, manicures, and bridal makeup. Our top customers are brides who come from rural areas.
Thanks to the training we received from ESD, we are now profitable and able to cover our running costs. We have even started saving money to expand our business by establishing a beauty training institution and a children’s beauty salon.
I am so grateful to ESD for their support and follow-up. Without their help, I would not have been able to start my own business and achieve the success I have today.
Eyob Mikias
Eyob Mikias
My name is Eyob Mikias, and I am a 30-year-old man born in Debrebirhan town. I had to drop out of school after the 9th grade due to my family’s economic problems. I started working as a daily laborer to support my family, but it was still challenging to have a secure income to provide for them.
One day, while I was struggling with my finances, I heard some good news. The kebele was recruiting beneficiaries for vocational training, and I decided to apply. I was fortunate enough to be selected by the kebele recruiting committee, and I joined the three-month theoretical and practical training.
After completing the training, I launched a dairy farm with my friends. ESD provided us with a startup-capital, which helped us get started. Our hard work and dedication paid off, and our dairy farm became successful. We now earn Birr 60,000 per month, and we produce mozzarella cheese and other dairy products from our six cows.
Thanks to ESD’s support and the vocational training, my friends and I have been able to live a better life. This success has encouraged us to dream of a brighter future and a bigger dairy farm. We are grateful to ESD and its donors for enabling us to achieve this success and envisioning a better future for ourselves and our families.
Bitania Abebayehu
Bitaniya Abebayehu
My name is Bitaniya, and I have been an ICT teacher at ANDINET PRIMARY school for the past six months. During my time here, I have had the opportunity to train 478 students, 293 of whom are female and 185 are male. These students are in grades 5th through 8th, and I have been using the module prepared by ESD to teach them.
After completing the training, the students have shown remarkable progress in using Word, Excel, and the internet. The availability of the internet has made it easier for them to access technology.
Before ESD’s intervention, students had no chance to use computers before joining high school. Teachers used to prepare rosters and grade details manually, which was time-consuming and prone to errors. However, after ESD trained us and provided computer accessibility at the school, the grading system has been computerized. This has made roster preparation and grading computation accurate, efficient, and time-saving. Thanks to ESD’s support, we have been able to introduce technology into our teaching methods and improve our students’ learning outcomes.
Student Natnael Desta is a 7th-grade student who has been attending ICT class since I was a 5th-grade student. I want to be a space scientist and am passionate about innovative works and producing valuable items by recycling locally available materials.
STUDENT RAHEL TEKLEHAYMANOT, Before the establishment of the IT center, we did not have access to computer technology or awareness about the digital world. However, thanks to ESD’s support, we are now well aware of the digital world and how to gather information from the internet. This has allowed us to become more creative and solve problems by producing different items from things that were once considered scrap or not useful.
Rawa Endashaw