Zufan Mekonne

ACISDA has formed several girls agency with capacitated the girls self-steam and confidentiality to raise their voice loudly among the community and local government to resolved their educational barriers by themselves through formally established girls agencies.  In this regards, Girls club social media groups, Woredas/Districts girls’ forms, and school safeguarding focal persons have in place to exercising their agency to addressing their educational barriers.  In line with this, Zufan Mekonne 29 years of age school girls club social media group head for Adalelnawoderagie Primary School in Dewe Woreda/District says.

 “Adalelinawoderage School was one of the 6 targeted schools in the Dewe Woreda/District. When the project started in 2022, there were only 41% students who were in grades 1-4 and now a day 68-% female children enrolled from the total number of students in the school as a result of girls social media club member public advocacy and created a continuous engagement with Woreda/District education office, Woreda/District girls forum, and school safeguarding focal person.

According to the report of Dewe Woreda/District education office the dropout rate of girls’ student from grade 9 -12 are 6 among 300 girls’ students in 2014.2021/22. Similarly, in 2015/2022/23 the dropout rates are only 2 among 324 girls’ students. These data shows that the girls student dropout rate is decreased in 2015/2022/23 than 2014 E.C/2021/22 in Mohamed Bodaya secondary high school.

Therefore, the community attitude completely changed towards the importance of education particularly girls education and children with disability (CWD) awareness enhanced.  Moreover, those girls’ social media club member’s students’ literacy and numeracy skills improved on science subjects in our school as a result of online learning that has been provided by different website links. 

In other hand, those girls social media groups member conducted a monitoring program each week about the girls’ students’ attendance jointly with each grade/class head teachers. As for that reason, a total of 16 girls’ drop-out students return back to school as for the tremendous effort and engagement of girls’ social media club students and Woreda /District girls’ forum, and the school safeguarding focal person In the meantime, I have also the focal person of safeguarding issues and I have selected and assigned by the developed selection criteria as school safeguarding focal person. I have received standard training from ACISDA (Malala fund) project.

The female students begin to share their reproductive health problems just like menstruation problems as a cause of FGM/C and also pre-arranged marriage which is local known as ‘’Absuma’’. In line with, as safeguarding focal person of the School I provided a reproductive health counseling services for those in needs female students in our School.

Likewise, the dropout rate of girls’ students decreased due to this well-organized collaboration of PTSCs, Kebele Chair-mans, Woreda/District girls’ forum, girls’ social media club, and clan & religious leaders’ engagement.  As a result of the community attitude changed towards on their negative social norms. In the same view, those conducted awareness raising trainings and the girls’ club social media group the conducted mass public advocacy campaigns helped to achieved significant behavioral change  of the community on their deep-rooted social norms mainly focused on the importance of girls’ education and children with disability (CWD).