Ellilta - Women at Risk works with female commercial sex workers of Ethiopia, helping the women get out of the poverty trap in which they are caught in and enables them to start a new life.

It all started back in 1993 when a family discussion about prostitution motivated Serawit Teketel (Cherry) to do something about it. At the time she herself was an unemployed university graduate, searching for job for almost a year without any result. During her own struggles, she felt God challenge her about the plight of Addis Ababa's street women. If she was struggling to find a job with a university degree, how much more difficult, almost impossible, was it for these women with all their brokenness and lack of education? That was the start of Women at Risk. When Wendy and Andrew Brown (USA) came back to Addis, they were able to team up and make the first contact on the streets. Gradually, they began to meet other people, Yvonne Mildred (UK) and Ruth and Andy Meakins (UK) who carried the same burden for these women. As a team of same heart, they started to look closely into the issue, talk to people, read, pray and then go out on the streets to meet the girls.

What soon became apparent very quickly was that the girls on the street were desperate for help to get out of their current life style. In a city with more than 60% unemployment it would be impossible to find them jobs when most of them had little or no education, no employable skill. So the team began to look into the idea of vocational training. However, they soon discovered that the various vocational training schemes within the city required a minimum of eight years' formal education. This left only one option: to tailor training that would give the women employable skills which takes their educational and social background into consideration. Since 1996, the team have developed and implemented various training schemes that continue to meet the needs of the girls.

The Women at Risk team comprises 10 full time staff and short term volunteers working in counselling and rehabilitation, marketable skills training, job finding and small business set-ups, alongside other teaching schemes.

Though poverty and unemployment are common reasons for forcing young women into prostitution, the team have seen other issues emerge over the years, issues that push them into prostitution and keep them there. Some of the issues are dysfunctional families, sexual abuse (mainly rape) teen-age pregnancies etc... As a result, the majority of the girls are primary school drop-outs, or on occasions have no schooling, which gives them not much of an option to take life-changing steps.

Therefore, the whole rehabilitation process are adapted to meet this issues and needs. Activities of counselling, training and teaching are all tailored towards helping the women face and deal with various problems and life issues positively and constructively. Once they get to the point of positive behaviourial changes, they are then taught various skills that can help them gain employment and start/run small businesses.