Abilities, Strategies, Perceptions, Influences and Interventions that Engender Resilience among Secondary School Girls in Ethiopia

Abstract

This report aims to identify the individual and external factors that have engendered the development of resilience among Ethiopian secondary school girls. Pact Ethiopia initiated this study on resilience as a component of the GET-SET project in order to better understand how girls overcome and pursue their education despite multifarious adversities in their personal lives and in the wider environment. The GET SET project is funded by the Oak Foundation, a donor which funds activities to combat global social and environmental concern that have a major impact on the lives of the disadvantaged, particularly in relation to child abuse, human rights and women’s development. The GET SET project works to empower girls whose life circumstances put them at risk of sexual exploitation and abuse in their communities and school environment. GET SET builds on a sister project of Pact Ethiopia, Girls’ Empowerment and Management Project (GEM), which provided significant academic strengthening, economic strengthening and life skills training inputs into girls’ lives over a two-year period. GET SET operates around the vicinity of fifteen secondary schools in three regions of Ethiopia: Amhara, Gambella and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR).