Meet Abera, a 45 year old religious and community leader who had no knowledge about harmful traditional practices like HTP and FGM but after the training with Berhan Lehetsanat, he is now much more aware, and has started to work for change towards FGM and HTP.
We visited senior officials Tamrat and Mussie at Manicho Health Centre. They were pleased with the selection of Malga for the BL/DDP project, where HTP rates have been particularly high, and the focus on girls and women, who are most vulnerable.
In April 2022 we dropped in on a gathering of people in the small town of Wotera, convened by their local Community Volunteer. Bayush, head of the Malga Women and Children Office, and Tamiru from Berhan Lehetsanat addressed the group. While we were there, one woman reported that parents in the area had stopped forcing […]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when restrictions on travel and gatherings were in place and schools were closed, our partners at Berhan Lehetsanat kept the momentum of the Improving Women and Girls’ Health project going through FM radio broadcasts in the Sidamic language – reaching people in neighbouring areas as well as in Malga woreda. Below […]
(2019) Yeamlak is 8 years old and deaf. Bisrat, her father, travels 20km to school with her by bus every day and stays until school is over. The school operates a shift system to cater for over 4,000 children and is the first school in Adama to have special needs education and teachers, supplemented by […]
DDIA is a deaf-led national NGO that aims to improve the lives of young deaf people through skills and enterprise training and support. DDP has worked with DDIA on three livelihood initiatives since 2014, the most recent of which has been a 3-year project to enable deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) young adults to […]
Berhan Lehetsanat (‘Children of Light’) is an Ethiopian NGO based in Addis Ababa, and a DDP partner since 2003. Their work is primarily with disabled children and focuses on education, health and livelihoods using a community-based development approach. Through the partnership with DDP, BL have enhanced the scope and scale of their work and have […]
Melaku was one of 8 deaf teaching assistants involved in our project on Improving education for deaf and hard of hearing children with DDIA in Ethiopia. When he started working at Adama School, there were no special educational needs (SEN) teachers or resources. Melaku worked with the school director Teshane to refurbish the disused library […]
Rahel and her husband Anteneh run a café near the busy Piassa area of Addis Ababa, set up through our project with DDIA on Improving income for deaf people. Previously they had set up a cybercafé, but demand plummeted due to the advent of smartphones. Undeterred, they attended training Along with other deaf people and […]
DDIA, Ethiopia 2015-2018, with the support of Medicor Foundation The Medicor Foundation funded a 3-year Deaf Development and Information Association (DDIA) project to enable deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) young adults to learn new skills and develop sustainable and profitable enterprises. 12 groups of young adults were trained in barber and hairdressing skills and provided […]