Child Development is a process of change during which a child is able to reach his/her unique spiritual, physical, intellectual, mental, cognitive, emotional and social potential. The development of each of these dimensions should be promoted simultaneously, through interaction with his/her environment, and should be viewed as a continual lifetime process. 

It also means about children to build positive personal and social relationships, being and feeling safe and free from fear and enjoying the total peace at home, school, and workplace. It is about the well being of children from home to the environment. It needs the involvement of parents, teachers, school community, peers, society as a whole, culture, government and nongovernmental organizations.  

The child development program of Hiwot Ethiopia strives for the realization of child protection system, sensitization of the community and parents to win their support and sustain the activities of the project, building better psychological makeup and deliver social support to disadvantaged children through active participation of children and the community. It works emphasizing on survival part of development in general and protection through the involvement of male and boys in particular taking protection as its pillar.

Engaging Boys and Men

In the past, many programmes have focused on empowering women to gain gender equality. It is now understood that engaging boys and men, increasing their understanding of the issues and gaining their support for solutions is a very effective strategy for increasing the well-being of children and women. Male engagement is a cross cutting strategy for Hiwot Ethiopia and is integrated into all its programmes and activities.

OUT OF SCHOOL Activities

YENIGAT WOG

Tune in to our radio program that addresses engaging with boys and men to prevent child focused sexual abuse and exploitation On Sheger FM 102.1 every Friday 8:40am-9:00am and Wednesday 1:40pm-2:00pm.

HELPLINE: 936

Our helpline provides free counseling services for children and young people, who have been infected and affected and, information on SRH by HIV and AIDS; and information on wider SRH issues.

Child led initiatives as a Change Agents

Protection project aims at establishing an integrated child protection mechanism that will be open for all children of the target areas through engaging boys who can play the most prominent role to end the violence.

Civil society fund gears its effort to enhance the capacity of existing and potential child led initiatives that are operational in Addis Ababa. This research based project mainly focuses in building the capacity of clubs through conducting formal assessment, so that they would be able to effectively address issues that are important and that are questioning the wellbeing and harmonious development of children.

The end result is assisting the initiatives to transfer to clubs though building their capacity and intensive follow up.

Based on the assessment Hiwot has established and build three model out of school child led initiatives in Addis Ababa. What makes these initiatives unique is their age composition, administering themselves, continuous discussions made and facilitated by themselves on the issues of male engagement to protect children from any form of harm. They have designed their own by law, practicing leadership and administering the finance for operation cost.
Model Child led initiatives are the major change agents of Hiwot Ethiopia Child development program.

IN SCHOOL Activities

Safe school environment: is an environment which encompasses the program that provides safety and security of the students and other school families. Its basic goal is to create and maintain a positive and welcoming school climate in which all members take pride. It works for quality education through changing the physical and psychosocial environment of schools.  The major changes recorded in changing these environments under this project are:

Physical Environment: In making the physical environment of schools safe Hiwot has endowed on renovating school library, fulfilling furniture for the library, donating books, donating tankers for safe and pure water, constructing feeding centers, mini media material support and providing sanitary pads for school girls.

Psycho-social Environment : This focuses on making students free from harassment or other violent forms, coercion, corporal punishment, and teachers treated with respect. Hiwot has formed in school clubs so as to conduct discussions among school students, equipping club members with basic trainings on how to protect children from any form of harm through engaging men and boys, etc.

Comfortable Reading Rooms for Children

Hiwot in collaboration with Save the children Sweden has renovated the library and equipped it with necessary furniture and different books. This construction urges the school committee to contribute its own share through hiring a librarian covering monthly salary.