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| Yegna in concert in Bahir Dar/Courtesy of Girl Effect |
Should
humanitarian aid be about food parcels and vaccination campaigns? Or could it
be something more intangible and holistic?
Yegna, a project trying to reframe the place
of girls in Ethiopian society - a country where discrimination and violence against girls and women are common -
crystallized that debate in the UK.
Over the past few years, the
right-wing media waged a campaign against Yegna - which was co-funded by the UK Department for International
Development (DIFD) - calling it “the most wasteful, ludicrous and patronizing”
aid project in Africa and “blood
boiling waste of taxpayers' money.”
The articles caused widespread outcry from MPs and
taxpayers. In January 2017, DIFD, which had previously given the program high
marks and had planned to give it £11.8m between 2015 and 2018, cut all funding.
Although
the right-wing media dubbed it “Ethiopia’s Spice Girls”, Yegna is not just a
girl group, but a brand that addresses issues such as early forced marriage,
violence and barriers to education through a very popular radio drama, music
and talkshows – all critical channels in a developing country with a
strong musical and storytelling tradition.
The radio drama, also called Yegna, features the
five band members representing characters with different backgrounds, facing
and overcoming many of the challenges experienced by Ethiopian girls.
Take Mimi, for example. In the drama, she is a
street kid who ran away from early marriage when she was 13 and had to
sacrifice her education. She lives on the street and sells chewing gum and
trinkets to passers-by.
“Mimi is my favorite character because she is most
like me. She’s very strong and does not give up,” says Alemtsehay Berihun, a
17-year-old Yegna fan who lives with her aunt in Wonka, a village in the Amhara
region.
In Amhara, where Berihun lives, and in Addis, the
two regions where Yegna is distributed, one in every two people listen to
Yegna, according to Girl Effect.
“In our
school, I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t know Yegna. You would walk
into a random house in our town and find a Yegna poster inside,” Berihun says.
The decision to cut funding disappointed Girl Effect, the charity behind Yegna, as well
as other aid organizations, which are developing less traditional and more
creative approaches to impact long-term changes. “We were surprised and disappointed,” says Gaya Butler, the
Ethiopia country director for Girl Effect. “Girl Effect addresses the demand
for aid rather than the supply of it. For example, many organizations are
building schools, but they are not filled because lots of cultural norms are
preventing girls from attending school. We tackle those social norms.”
And they were having an
impact. For example, 84 per cent of girls listening to Yegna, report that it
has helped them become more confident, while 76 per cent report it has inspired
them to continue their education, according to a 2014 audience survey, conducted by an
independent local research agency.
Boys have also been
inspired: 95 percent of boys who
regularly listen to Yegna agreed that they would speak to someone if they saw a
young girl being forced to get married.
And Yegna has helped change parents’ attitudes,
says Asnakech Kebede, 48, a mother of four girls and a primary school teacher.
“It used to be culturally unacceptable for girls to stand up straight and speak
up, but now parents see their value.”
For aid workers and
activists, the fate of Yegna is a lesson not only in tactics, but also in the
limitations of foreign funding — and how much anti-aid sentiment exists in many
countries.
Here
is the story I wrote for Broadly on Yegna,
explaining what Yegna is trying to achieve and how, and why I think it's a
project well worth supporting, in spite of the smear campaign by the right-wing
media. Let me know what you think.
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