It has been three years since Helvetas Ethiopia start implementing the Unleashing the Potential of Young Women (UP-Women) project in Sidama regional state in four city administrations centering its focus on creating gainful employment opportunities for 3500 young women through equipping them with the Technical and Vocational Education & Training (TVET) skills and other soft skills employing a Result Based Financing (RBF) in a gender transformative way partnering with 65 TEPs. To this end, the project have so far been providing trainings to a total of 2275 trainees in 5 rounds (cohorts) partnering with more than 27 Training and Employment Providers (TEPs). Besides, offering trainings, the project has exerted a continuous and comprehensive process of creating employment opportunity (wage and self) for these young women.
Currently, the UP-Women project is planning to conduct a tracer study to determine the employment status of Up-women graduates and impacts of the project implementation on the lives of disadvantaged young women in Hawassa, Yirgalem, Aleta Wondo and Daye. “A tracer study is a powerful monitoring and evaluation instrument to gain information about the relevance and effectiveness of Vocational Education and Training (VET) programs”(Helvetas, 2009).