Achieving results
In the slums of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Council president Peter Donaldson visited Biruh Tesfa (meaning “Bright Future” in Amharic), a Council program that provides literacy classes, health checkups, safe spaces to meet with peers, and identification papers to vulnerable out-of-school girls.
When Diribe Eyensa fled her home in rural Ethiopia and went to Addis Ababa to escape child marriage, the Population Council’s Biruh Tesfa program was there to give her a second chance at education and empowerment. Operated with the Ethiopia Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Regional Bureau of Youth and Sports, adult female mentors in the program seek out vulnerable out-of-school girls in the slums of Addis Ababa and offer them literacy classes, health checkups, safe spaces to meet with peers, and identification papers. As a result, the girls in the program—some of the most vulnerable in Ethiopia—start to build productive lives. You can learn more about Diribe and Biruh Tesfa by watching a video about her and the program on the multimedia section of our redesigned Web site.
Biruh Tesfa is just one example of how the Population Council’s programs catalyze social change by increasing awareness of forgotten people and working with national partners to find and promote culturally appropriate ways to improve their lives. And the multimedia section of our Web site is just one of the ways we’ve made our Web presence more informative and useful.
I invite you to explore our Web site to learn about the impact of Population Council programs on HIV and AIDS; poverty, gender, and youth; and reproductive health.
What's New
Schooling and Conflict in Darfur: A Snapshot of Basic Education Services for Displaced Children. The Population Council, in collaboration with the Women’s Refugee Commission, conducted a survey of basic educational services and facilities in North and West Darfur in 2008. Read about their findings in this report, forthcoming in March. To order a copy, contact publications@popcouncil.org
BMJ has announced the nominees for its prestigious annual award for "Getting Research into Practice." The Sexual Health and HIV Evidence into Practice (SHHEP) group—to which ABBA, a Population Council–led consortium, belongs—was nominated for successfully "advocating research findings to change the law in Ghana so that survivors of gender based and sexual violence are no longer forced to pay for their own medical tests to prove assault in court." Read more about this on page 6 of the linked PDF. (offsite link)
New statistics project more than five million fewer deaths from AIDS in 2030 than previously estimated. The Population Council's John Bongaarts and co-authors François Pelletier and Patrick Gerland address the cause and implications of the revised estimate in a recent article in The Lancet, "How many more AIDS deaths?" (more)
The Population Council applauds the US government’s renewed support and dedication to meeting the health and development goals laid out in the ICPD and other related UN agreements. (more)
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