Building Partner Support and Assets for Married Girls in Ethiopia
2018 - 2022 | Ethiopia
I’ve never been in a group of six women who are so intelligent, so different, and so supportive.Paige Bellissimo
Founding Maverick Next Member, Ethiopia
Maverick Next Members worked in Ethiopia with PSI’s Smart Start program — a groundbreaking program co-created with Ethiopian youth for Ethiopian youth — to help married adolescent couples delay pregnancy and find pathways out of poverty. The cohort’s investment funded two critical additions to the Smart Start program — strengthening the ways in which Smart Start engages husbands, as well as linking young couples to livelihood opportunities.
This is an experience that binds people.Marisa Bass
Founding Maverick Next Member, Ethiopia
PSI Board Member
In 2019, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation named Smart Start as one of its three Global Accelerators at the Foundation’s Goalkeepers event. This distinction recognizes the program as an extraordinary initiative that is propelling progress in global health toward the Sustainable Development Goals
The ground-breaking programs being designed and implemented in my country will help ensure that the lives of all of our citizens continue to improve, in particular the lives and futures of our adolescents, women and girlsSahle-Work Zewde
President of Ethiopia