Chosen from a pool of nearly 200 nominees worldwide by an international jury of experts, Bruktawit was among five outstanding social entrepreneurs who impressed the judging panel with their passion and conviction to overcome challenges facing our planet. Along with Bruktawit of Ethiopia, fellow Young Laureates from India, Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States were introduced at a press conference held by Rolex this week in Geneva.

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Profile

Bruktawit Tigabu began her professional career as a primary school teacher in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Determined to reduce child mortality rates in her country, she looked for ways to educate children on health matters. In 2005, with her husband, Tigabu set up Whiz Kids Workshop. Working from their living room, using sock puppets, computer graphics and their own voices, they began producing “Tsehai Loves Learning,” a television programme about a young, female giraffe, named Tsehai, which covers many health-related issues. Twenty-six episodes of this highly successful programme (in Amharic, Ethiopia’s principal language), have now been created, each one seen by an estimated 2.6 million children.

Projects

Almost 400,000 children under five die in Ethiopia every year, 70 per cent of them from diarrhoea, malaria, pneumonia, measles and malnutrition. Bruktawit Tigabu will produce new episodes of “Tsehai Loves Learning” to teach preschool children and their parents basic health education. The programme uses songs, stories and simple graphics to make health concepts easy to grasp. The episodes will be shown to children and parents on television, mainly in Addis Ababa, and in rural areas, where few families have television, at cinemas and community health centres. A radio version is being developed for nationwide broadcast to a potential audience of 40 million children. An impact study will assess behavioural changes following transmission of the episodes to measure any decrease in the child mortality rate. Some programmes will also be dubbed into Tigrinya (another language spoken in Ethiopia) and Sudanese Arabic.


See the Announcement Here