NURTURE is proud to have overcome the expected and unexpected challenges to welcome its first female Ph.D. exchange, Elsabet Wedajo Welde, from Jimma University in Ethiopia to continue her academic journey at the University of South-Eastern Norway, campus Drammen.
Since the start of the project, one of the main objectives of NURTURE has been to provide equal exchange opportunities for both men and women at the master’s and Ph.D. levels at its five Ethiopian academic partner institutions to come to Norway to elevate their skills, expand their professional network, and collaborate on publications. To achieve this, NURTURE has been facing lots of expected and unexpected challenges such as Covid, civil war in some regions of Ethiopia, implementation of the GAT (Graduate Admission Test) in Ethiopia, and delayed fund releases in the first place to even start the exchange program, and has been constantly trying to find solutions to overcome them. In addition, the scarcity of female candidates due to many context-related problems rooted in educational, financial, societal, or cultural complexities has been making it even harder for NURTURE to reach its desired gender equality ideals.
However, regardless of all of the aforementioned challenges, NURTURE has successfully managed a reasonable number of exchange batches at both master’s and Ph.D. levels so far, and this spring NURTURE managed to sponsor its first-ever female Ph.D. exchange, Elsabet Wedajo Welde, successfully. This milestone is also in line with NURTURE’s recent efforts to promote female role models to encourage more females to join higher education in Ethiopia and motivate more females in the Ethiopian academia to follow their academic goals up to the maximum capacity.
Below you can see the welcome gathering organized by Dr. Shegaw Anagaw Mengiste, NURTURE’s Project Manager, for Elsabet to help her settle in Norway smoothly and get to know more about Norway as it will be her home for the next few months.
