Final signature count: 16,564

16,564 signatures toward our 25,000 goal

Many Ethiopian women face a heartbreaking choice before they even turn 16 years old: they must choose between marriage or face intense manual labor and sexual slavery if they leave home1. It’s a life doomed for violence and injustice.

A state-led industrial drive has transformed Ethiopia into one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, yet over a third of its 99 million citizens still live in extreme poverty, on less than $1.90 a day2.

Girls are often regarded as a financial burden on their families in the Horn of Africa country long blighted by cycles of disease, drought, hunger and conflict, and expected to drop out of school to get married or find employment3.

“When a child is born a girl in Ethiopia… she is born into servitude. She is literally there to serve the family,” Bogaletch Gebre, who grew up in the 1960s in Kembatta, southern Ethiopia, told Reuters. “It’s a tragedy.”

These girls don’t have to suffer.

The Bright Future program, or Biruh Tesfa in Amharic, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia helps low-income women and girls become assimilated into society by providing them academic education, life skills, and reproductive education4.

Bright Future helps these girls build their social support and improve skills to prevent HIV infection, while mentors help the girls realize their true potential. The project uses a combination of house-to-house recruitment, formation of girls’ groups by female mentors, and education on HIV/AIDS, life skills, and basic literacy.

According to a paper published in “Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies5,” Bright Future is leading to positive changes, and showing how other well-designed programs can reach and effectively support the most vulnerable girls in the poorest areas, such as child domestic workers and rural-urban migrants.

Sign the petition telling UN Secretary to officially support the Bright Future Program, a monumental step in preventing violence against women.