Voices from the Field
Education
Sector: Girl’s access to Education in Ethiopia
Location: Ethiopia
PD Parents successful messages:
“I want to send both my boys and my girls because they are equally my children.”
“Flying an airplane or driving an automobile is not through inheritance, but through education.”
“An educated person is always gaining, but an uneducated person is always losing.”
“Girls are more costly than boys. Girls do not just wake up in the morning and go to school like boys, they want to wash their face, put some lotion, and wear some decent clothes which is most of the time difficult.”
PD Girl Students messages:
“I deal with the challenge [feeling shame for being poor] by not seeing those students of wealthy families and living according to the standard of my family”
“I will tell the child to be strong and bear all the problems that he or she faces and finish schooling to get a job.”
“I want to be a teacher. My teacher used to be a student just like me and now that he is grown he can support himself by being a teacher and I want to do just like that.”
“I will advise parents to go to Erre town and see all the doctors and teachers, etc, and ask them if you want your children to be just like these people they need to be educated and for that they need to sacrifice.”
PD Quotes from the Field
“PD is like a flashlight. It helps to shine light and illuminate what hides behind the darkness. It helps us discover what already exists. For example, it helps us discover our existing strengths we had not realized or utilized.”
~a kader, Kedoyo, Indonesia
“The PD approach is like digging with a hoe. One needs to turn the soil over to see what lies hidden and buried beneath. Then the land is ready to plant new crops.”
~Raymond, community leader in Pader District, Indonesia