If I didn’t live here, I might have dropped out from school and run away to a big city to look for other opportunities’//Safe Home keeps Zerfe in school
This is Zerfe Asfar. She is 17 years old, and started receiving support from Hiwot Ethiopia in 2015. Her family members are all farmers and were not supportive of her going to school, and instead wanted her to get married. When she was in grade 3 and 7 years old, her parents arranged her engagement.
By chance, when her aunt came to visit, Zerfe told her about the engagement. She then left her family and went to stay with her aunt, where she attended school until 5th grade, after which she went back to live with her family. Her father – a tailor – started losing his sight around this time, and wasn’t able to make as much money as he was before. This made it hard to support her education as she was renting a house in Deneba, where the school is, which was necessary since her village is 30 km away. This remained the situation until 9th grade, which is when she heard about the safe home from her friends who were also staying there. She was accepted, and has been receiving 200 birr/month, sanitary pad training, and life skill training ever since. Furthermore, she has been involved in the peer-to-peer discussion about SRH.
She expressed that she thought the sanitary pad training was very useful, since pads are hard to find in rural areas. She has been able to share what she has learned with other girls. The support she has received has allowed her to learn like other girls, and develop more confidence. She said ‘If I didn’t live here, I might have dropped out from school and run away to a big city to look for other opportunities’, so she’s very happy that she’s able to live at the safe home.