ethiopia: reaching rural children

In Amigna Daba, a small rural village in the south-central Ethiopian highlands, girls must overcome distance as well as cultural and religious barriers to education. The village has no services, no safe water, and no roads, or other basic infrastructure. The nearest school is a three-hour walk away. The challenges children face in going to school in rural Ethiopia are hard to imagine. Sixty-four percent of the population in the country lives in absolute poverty. This harsh statistic translates into a weak educational infrastructure, which serves only 57 percent of the total school age population and 47.0 percent of school age girls.