Sponsor a Teen

Sponsor a Teen

The teen program has always been at the core of the Team Tesfa program. This program provides safe housing and education for girls who are homeless and vulnerable. Please volunteer to sponsor one of these girls for the coming year. Get to know her; get to know the challenges she faces. Above are three of the six new girls, ages 14-16, who have moved into the Tesfa safe house this summer: Merron, Birkenesh, and Fantu.

The Need:
In Ethiopia, long-distance runners are heroes. Every year hundreds of teenage girls come to Addis Ababa from the surrounding regions to train as athletes, hoping to escape poverty through their talent. At the least, they hope for education and employment in the capital city. The majority of them have no friends or family to support them. Many of these girls will be victims of sexual violence. Many will be forced into some form of servitude and possibly prostitution in order to survive.

In Addis Ababa more than 30 per cent of girls aged 10-14 are not living with their parents. Twenty per cent of these have run away from child marriages. Twelve per cent of adolescents aged 10-14 surveyed in Addis Ababa were domestic workers.

The athletic team serves as a powerful medium for reaching these girls. It becomes a support structure in a dangerous and alienating environment. It’s a medium for providing vulnerable young girls with the skills and confidence to lift themselves out of poverty and become self reliant models for other women.