Malala Fund Champions and Grantees operating in Ethiopia have committed to contributing their efforts to support girls, community groups, and schools affected by the conflict and war between the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigrian Liberation Front in the Amhara Region, with special emphasis on the ten woredas of North Shewa as well as North and South Gonder. The project mainly focuses on: Saving girls and young women’s lives: in most of the districts at risk of war, girls and young women were displaced and forced to stay in IDP centers. Due to the large number of IDPs, the need for food supplies  was hard to meet.
Based on the request of Champions and Grantees, the Malala Fund showed commitment to support the Ethiopian champions and grantees to implement an education emergency response project, the Joint Action Grant, to be implemented in a four-month’ period starting on February 10, 2022. Under the leadership of Hiwot Ethiopia, Education for Sustainable Development, We-Action, Centre of Concern, and Amhara Women’s Association have implemented the project in East and West Amhara Regional States.
The implementing partners have committed to and properly addressed the needs of the community groups and the interests of the regional government by delivering food and nonfood items to girls, young mothers, and their families. Similarly, the project provided practical support to schools and students.
These interventions have contributed a lot to the overall efforts of the government and other NGOs in saving and sustaining the lives of girls, young mothers, and their families. The emergency project improved the psychosocial wellbeing of girls and young women, created a safer space by protecting them from any form of abuse or violence, and also supported their return to school.
During the implementation period, implementing partners faced various challenges, such as uncontrollable cost inflation, difficulty in accessing adequate and proper materials and items from the markets, as well as serious gaps in time management that extended the implementation period to eight months (September 30, 2022).
In general, the overall project has committed and reached 1725 families on food items, 636 children on supplementary foods, 1338 girls and women on hygiene and sanitary materials, 911 families on nonfood items, 11 schools with need-based materials, and 4008 students with educational materials. Similarly, the project had planned a total budget of 19,593,350.00 ETB (400,000 USD) and utilised a total of 19,451,865.79 ETB (397,058 USD).
Finally, Hiwot Ethiopia and Education Emergency Response partner organisations are grateful to our donor-Malala Fund, Amhara National Region State Government from regional to woreda level, and other stakeholders who have supported us to reach our target groups and population that needed urgent support.

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