Ethiopia: Providing Support to Primary School

Like the Parent Teachers’ Association (PTAs) in other primary schools found within the Arsi Negelle District of Ethiopia, the PTA of Woyo Hargessa Primary School was established to act as a bridge between parents and teachers and to involve the community in the efforts geared to boost the internal income of the school. The major problem of this school PTA and the community as a whole was the shortage of school income resulting in an inability to pay the salaries of community recruited teachers throughout the academic year, to build additional classrooms for the increasing number of students, and solving other financial challenges within the school.

As part of its intervention the ADRA Ethiopia SEAQE (Strengthening Equity and Access to Quality Education) Project, provided training for PTAs about their role and responsibilities in school improvement programs. As a result of the knowledge gained from this training, the school PTA started to mobilize the school and the surrounding community to overcome the school financial problems by becoming fully engaged in income generating school activities. Before the introduction of this intervention by the ADRA Ethiopia SEAQE Project community participation was low.

But through regular meetings of the PTA with the community, parental awareness has started to increase in regards to the school property and the role they play in maintaining its quality to ensure the quality of education provided to their children. As the result of this, the school PTA and the surrounding community meets together regularly to discuss the challenges faced by the school and any possible solutions that may help to alleviate such challenges.

To date this has resulted in 676 community members being mobilized to work on the five hectares of the school farm land, ploughing and sowing different grains to increase land production. Now the school community is expecting to produce approximately 120 quintals of grain by the end of this year and they believe that this will enable the school to avoid all of their financial problems.

The school PTA and the school community as a whole would like to thank the ADRA Ethiopia SEAQE Project for providing them with all necessary support for them to overcome such a big challenge and to look forward to a more productive future for their community and future generations.