And what might that be? Well, here it’s an opportunity to experience a journey that reflects a typical day in the life of an Ethiopian girl and discover more about her community and hopefully encouraging her at the same time.
Organised by the Girl Hub Ethiopia, which is part-funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), these specific experiences can feed into the design of DFID programmes – with the aim of putting girls at the centre of such programmes and not merely to assume that what applies for women also applies to girls.
The economic value to the community of empowering girls more fully is considerable.
Against that background, we set off on Thursday morning to spend some hours in a district of Addis Ababa with Meron, a 15 year old girl who lives with her grandmother, father and uncle in a small house of which she is intensely proud. Even on a school day, Meron must be up early to clean, bring firewood and help sell the injera bread her grandmother makes to local cafes.
It is not an easy life, but she makes the most of every moment – an excellent student, she also reads avidly in her spare time; makes beautiful sewing work; and loves sport (she is a keen footballer and has enjoyed playing netball and practicing Tae-Kwando). Her ambition is to be a lawyer and she deserves to get the chance to be one: she is certainly multi-talented and inspiring.
It is a real education for me to see Meron’s home and the surrounding area; to find out about the challenges and opportunities she faces; and to learn about what makes her happy and what small changes might transform her life.
We visit the stadium where she spends much of her free time with friends and stop there to carry out some activities which help us to understand her past; what her current life is like; and her future hopes and fears. And we explore what she wants for her imaginary future daughter – who is going to be a lucky girl!
By the end of the day I have a much better idea of what it must be like to be in Meron’s shoes. And I and my colleagues have learned things that could well shape our work in the future.