Link Ethiopia’s Country Representative Nicolo di Marzo reports on recent training.
On Saturday, May 29 Link Ethiopia women colleagues— Birtukan, Wegayehu and Kalkidan— travelled all the way from Wolayta Soddo to Addis Ababa, to attend We-Women Empowered, a Women’s Embodied Self-Defence Class. Run by KHUL WORLD in a fun and informative way, the 4-hour training focusing on: 1. awareness, preparedness and prevention skills; 2. conflict-resolution; 3. boundary-setting; 4. effective self-defence techniques and 5. stress-management & self-care.
Our women colleagues—who have utilised their staff development allowance, a small annual contribution that Link offers to its employees for personal and professional development purposes, to attend the workshop—had the chance to learn how to protect themselves and plant a seed on how to eradicate violence against women and girls, which affects nearly a third of women aged between 15 and 49 as per a 2016 Health and Demographic survey conducted by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia.
KHUL WORLD is an Ethiopian Social Enterprise which started as a small community of students in Mekelle University who dared to challenge and question the fundamentals of how society approaches education, work and human wellbeing. Based on the belief that transformation of individuals opens doors to global transformation, KHUL WORLD has pioneered the concept of self-engineering (ሰብዓዊ ምህንድስና) and social engineering (ማህበረሰባዊ ምህንድስና), to unleash the practice and understanding of inner sciences towards healthier, happier, responsible and inclusive individuals, societies, nations and world.
Committed to an organisational culture that tackles power imbalances and gender inequality, Link is dedicated to ensuring that our working environment is free from any form of abuse or exploitation, as must be the children, vulnerable adults and families that we reach through our education work, that in Ethiopia only has reached 62,700 girls in 123 schools through the UK Aid funded Girls’ Education Challenge project.
