Introducing myself and my journal: PinK Girl Ethiopia Education program

About Me:
PinK Girl Ethiopia began in 2011 as a pilot program for girls in secondary school. I have been coming to Northern Ethiopia from the USA since 2006 and stay 6-8 months over the course of a year. While working on various projects like conferences for women, humanitarian projects for single moms, teaching and speaking the issue of the lack of educated girls became my passion. PinK Girl was founded by a teenage girl from the USA and me to provide tutoring for girls 7th-12th grades in order for girls to successfully pass the 10th and then the 12th grade national exams and attend a nation university. We began with 15 girls and now have 150 girls in the program. We added Life Skills classes in September of 2011 and that has rounded out our program. 6 months ago we had a law firm in the USA donated 4 refurbished laptops. We brought them to Bahir Dar. The internet connection is a huge challenge and very expensive.
We have started by downloading the Mavis Beacon typing program. This way we do not need internet access and the girls are learning to type. Once they reach a certain level of success in the typing program we will bring to introduce them to the internet and Facebook. We want to make sure we have taught our girls the safety needs and privacy settings before introducing them to the internet.
SO we are excited to add Computer classes to our schedule. We are limited with only 4 laptops but we hope to have another 6 donated this summer and then we can increase the capacity.
Once the girls get to the university they must have computer skills and we are excited that we can begin with our 11th and 12th grade girls first. www.pinkgirl.org

My Passions:
Girls have great value and purpose-My passion is to help them find just that

My Challenges:
Culture limitations as the girls have so many responsibilities at home. We need the families to buy in to giving their girls opportunity

My Vision for the Future:
PinK Girl will expand in depth before more girls are added. We are in process of obtaining our NGO status in the country.

My Areas of Expertise:
M.A. Cross-culture Leadership, Conflict resolution, Mediation, Motivational Speaker in Ethiopia and USA