Promoting Girls’ Education: 
United States Provides 1,000 New Scholarships

December 6, 2005
No. 52/05

Addis Ababa (U.S. Embassy) -- On Tuesday, December 6, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires, Ambassador Vicki Huddleston, joined Ato Fuad Ibrahim, State Minister of Education, at Yekatit 12 Secondary School to announce the 2005-2006 Ambassador’s Girls Scholarship Program.  Provided through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), this year’s Ambassador’s Girls Scholarships are enabling 1,000 Ethiopian girls at 28 schools across the country to begin secondary school, while scholarships provided previously are continuing to support nearly 100 girls approaching graduation.

The U.S., through USAID, has been implementing the Ambassador’s Girls Scholarship Program since 2000.  Prior to this year, a total of 1,380 girls have benefited from the program since then, making Ethiopia’s Scholarship Program one of the largest in Africa. The program includes tuition, housing allowance, educational materials, and tutorial services to ensure access for girls to education at the secondary school level in Ethiopia.

The Ambassador’s Girls Scholarship Program is designed to help girls who are economically disadvantaged but academically high-performing stay in school and to enable them to achieve the highest possible standard of secondary education.  The program is part of President Bush’s African Education Initiative, which promotes innovative ways of providing more and better education across the continent.

Speaking at the ceremony, Ambassador Huddleston encouraged the group of scholarship recipients who attended the ceremony to aim high, reminding them of the words of President John F. Kennedy:  “Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”

In his remarks, USAID/Ethiopia’s director William Hammink noted that in Ethiopia, girls’ enrollment in school and their academic performance are greatly affected by economic and socio-cultural factors.  Studies indicate that the majority of rural families frequently choose to send their boys rather than girls to school. Moreover, the repetition and dropout rates for girls at the primary school level far exceed that of boys. Providing scholarships, tutorial services, and mentoring can help to close the gender gap in education and improve the performance of girls in school.

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