Project Details

The Promotion of Safe Migration Project, funded by The Freedom Fund/USG and implemented by EDA in Haike Town, South Wollo Zone, reached 4,234 girls and women during 2025. The initiative aimed to reduce vulnerabilities and risks associated with unsafe migration, particularly for women migrating to the Middle East for domestic work. The project promoted safe, orderly, and regular migration through community awareness campaigns, strengthened local governance and law enforcement responses, and targeted support for returnees, contributing to a measurable decline in illegal and unsafe migration within the intervention areas.

To sustain these outcomes, the program applied multi-channel awareness strategies and established protective community structures, including anti-trafficking taskforces, community-based organizations, and cross-sector partnerships. Returnees received tailored life skills, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and market-oriented vocational training, complemented by business development services, access to finance, workspace support, enterprise start-ups, and job placement opportunities.

Key achievements in 2025 include training 20 community conversation facilitators on safer migration and migration-related laws; reaching 2,100 schoolgirls through 90 peer education groups and 2,150 girls and women through 90 community conversation groups; providing scholastic materials to 124 girl students; strengthening five kebele-level anti-trafficking taskforces; training 25 multi-stakeholders on basic migration regulations; and strengthening one returnees’ association in Haike Town through capacity-building, including training 35 returnees in life skills. The association was subsequently selected by Freedom Fund Ethiopia for further support based on identified needs and gaps. Through this comprehensive, multi-level approach, the project enhanced community awareness, supported returnees, and strengthened local structures to prevent unsafe migration and human trafficking.