Ethiopia's Pastoralist Youth Get a Second Chance to Become EducatedA pastoral girl of 15 is the first girl from her village to study beyond the 4th grade. She graduates from an alternative basic education center and transitions into 5th grade at a nearby boarding school for pastoralists. A pastoral boy of 15 stands on one leg, not only the first to leave his village for upper primary school, but also the only student with a disability to take on such a challenge. A young mother of 18 sits under the shade of a tree school learning to read and write and says, "I want to become free from illiteracy, free from darkness. Our fathers are not literate. They did not send us to school. I want to become educated because it is an advantage for my life." These youth are participants in Pact Ethiopia's TEACH project, a program which gives children, youth and adults a second chance to become educated. Of Ethiopia's 73 million people, an estimated 12-15 million are pastoralists. While school enrollment among the overall population is 79.8%, enrollment among pastoralists is only 10.6% Pastoralist children grow up tending the herd and engaging in subsistence activities in areas where schools are often not found. And so, gradually, these children become youth – youth who have never received any formal or nonformal education. The TEACH project models a unique approach to providing education to the hardest-to- reach populations in Ethiopia's pastoralist/nomadic, resettlement and food-insecure areas. TEACH utilizes low-cost construction materials and draws on community labor and contributions to construct alternative basic education centers. The project then provides short-term, intensive training to facilitators drawn from the local community or surrounding area. Learners study at an accelerated pace, covering the equivalent of four years of primary school in three years. These alternative basic education centers also serve as centers of learning for functional adult literacy. TEACH advocates that education can reach the unreached, not only through provision of education services to children, but through three mutually reinforcing pillars of capacity building—educating children and youth, educating the parents and community members that support them, and educating the district education offices that are responsible for the provision of education. To date, 43,000 children, youth and adults have been enrolled and TEACH will reach 495,000 over the life of the project. The program is showing the initial fruit of its labors in that the first cohort of students are now graduating from alternative basic education centers and entering formal school where they will complete upper level primary education. Alie Jarta is one example. Alie Jarta is a young Tsemai pastoralist girl of 15. After 3 years of studying in a TEACH alternative basic education center in the village of Shala, she is the first girl to have graduated from the equivalent of primary first cycle primary and transitioned onward. Her father has now sent her to Kay Afar Boarding Hostel in the district capital of Benna Tsemai. Alie Jarta's district has made special efforts to accommodate pastoral students who come from mobile ethnic groups in sparsely populated areas. The district has opened boarding hostels where pastoralist youth reside while they complete upper primary and secondary schooling. Alie Jarta stands as the lone girl, among 15 other pastoral boys, to graduate from a TEACH Alternative Basic Education Center in pastoral areas and transition into the Kay Afar Boarding Hostel. Alie Jarta is one among 10 children. No other girls have graduated out of the Shala center and no girl in her locality has ever completed any education higher than grade 4. Alie's village, Shala, is a 6 hour walk from the hostel and 19 km from the nearest rural back road. The evening that her father finalized the decision to send her to boarding school, the village feasted all night. Later, when TEACH monitors came to visit Shala village, one month after she had left for boarding school, Alie Jarta's birth mother, Laiba, came down the road to meet the car. When she heard news of her daughter, tears began to cascade from her eyes. "Have you seen my daughter? Do you have a picture of her?" Though she misses her daughter, Laiba says she is happy Alie Jarta is becoming educated. "Marriage here is not an advantage. She will marry outside. And when she is educated, we will increase her dowry." Laiba differs from parents in some other pastoral areas who sometimes place a higher dowry on uneducated girls, because they are seen as more valuable spouses who are less likely to leave behind the traditional pastoralist way of life. Alie's father's second wife, Boya, is not so excited about Alie Jarta's departure from the village and the recent rise in school enrollment among the village's pastoralist children and youth. "Before I had four children helping me. Now I have none. Two in school would have been good enough." Yet, Boya is not without recognition of the value of education. When asked, "What will happen when all the children in the village become educated?", others respond, "The youth will get a better income". However, Boya says, "When all people are educated, they will change. And they will come back to this village and they will change this environment with their knowledge." Other children and adolescents in Shala village see Alie Jarta as a model for the alternative basic education. Barginde is a 9 year-old girl in Level 3. She wants to become a teacher and she is very excited at the prospects of being able to go to boarding school to complete upper primary school.
"What will happen to you when you get educated?" Ideas are changing among elders in Shala village. After having attended various training and awareness-raising sessions, Aba Aono has become a staunch and enthusiastic supporter of education. Aba Ono serves on Shala's Alternative Basic Education Center Management Committee. Each day, the committee counts the children in class and goes to parents' homes to ask why children are absent. When the facilitator is absent, the committee reports the absence to the district education office or the TEACH Implementing NGO. Last year 54 students came to the Shala village Alternative Basic Education center. This year, enrollment has more than doubled - there are now 131 students studying in Shala. Though at first she was afraid, Alie Jarta is now becoming accustomed to life in the Boarding Hostel. She is only able to go home once a semester, but her father comes to visit her every Thursday on market day. When she grows up, Alie Jarta wants "to go anywhere and teach". When asked of her advice for other pastoral adolescent girls across Ethiopia, Alie Jarta says Temaru, 'get educated'. Article and Photographs by Katy Anis. Sources: Education Statistical Annual Abstract 2004/5, Education Management Information Systems, Ministry of Education, 2005. "Pastoralist Forum for Ethiopia". Pastoralist Forum for Ethiopia, 2006. Anis, Katy. "TEACH Reaching the Unreached: Lives Change in South Omo Zone." PACT, 2006.
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