A home for street girls
The collaboration with Busajo NGO ETS continues. Together, we have created a project that aims to restore the human dignity and confidence in the future of the girls and young women we host and is designed to give a new life and the first real opportunities to the street girls and young women of Soddo.
A future beyond the street
The term 'Street Girls' refers to all girls and young women under the age of 18 who, for various reasons, find themselves living on the street. Many of these girls and young women are illiterate and have lived their entire lives in their native villages and families of origin, where very often their problems began.
Young girls often have family conflicts, early marriages (under the age of 15), sexual abuse by relatives or adoptive parents (father, brothers, uncles, grandparents), physical violence, the death of a parent, poverty and the need for work to support the family economically. Child prostitution is often practised in nightclubs, bars, brothels, but more often on street corners, putting their lives in serious danger.
All these factors can force a girl to leave her family in search of some freedom. However, hopes for a new life remain unfulfilled and in order to survive in the big city, most of them become prostitutes. Prostitution, but also work as servants or slaves within families, imposes unacceptable treatment on these young lives in terms of respect for human rights. The onset of psychological problems and trauma is very common: stress, depression, anxiety, alcohol and drugs, and eating disorders are the most common results of trying to survive.
Recovery programmes that also take in girls in Ethiopia are scarce or completely absent. For these young girls, the path of social reintegration is also particularly painful and difficult because most of the time they are rejected by their families of origin. For all these reasons, the girls and young women who are placed at Busajo Campus, who come from paths that leave deep wounds in body and soul, need even more individual and careful care than the boys and young men.
The rehabilitation programme that the friends of Busajo NGO-ETS have identified and that the girls and young women follow on the Campus bears concrete and visible fruit: through education and respect for the rules of coexistence, the young women regain hope in their future and begin - or begin for the first time - to believe in themselves and in the possibility of a better life.
