Our Approach
Our team travels regularly to Ethiopia to engage with our local partner organisations, and to ensure that our funding is meaningful and effective. We connect with individuals and companies in Switzerland and beyond, adopting a meticulously strategic approach to both fundraising and project management. We are committed to monitoring, evaluation, and maintenance to ensure that our programs operate sustainably for years to come.
We have adopted a holistic approach: training midwives, empowering women to become role models, and ensuring safer, more dignified labour conditions by supplying light, power and other essential equipment to delivery rooms. Our goal is to empower women and girls via three complementary approaches: LEARN, LIGHT and LEAD.
Learn
Funding the training of midwives from poor rural areas to increase the number of skilled birth attendants in underserved areas. Education unlocks brighter futures, both for individuals and for entire communities.
Light
Providing sustainable, reliable light and power through solar technology in health centres to support safe deliveries in rural areas of Ethiopia. This creates a measurable decrease in traumatic birth injuries and preventable deaths.
Lead
Encouraging positive behavioural change by creating conditions whereby mothers want to give birth at the nearest health centre. Our projects promote midwives as role models and leaders in their rural communities. The ripple effect of education and technology is incredibly powerful.
Learn
“When you educate a woman, you educate a community”
– African proverb
GreenLamp improves the access to and quality of education and healthcare for women in rural Ethiopia by supporting the training of skilled and empathic young professional midwives through the following programs:
Midwifery Scholarships
To address the high maternal and infant mortality rates as well as long-term health problems in rural Ethiopia, GreenLamp funds the education of midwives at the Hamlin College of Midwives (HCM ) in Addis Ababa, and St. Luke College of Nursing and Midwifery in Wolisso. Their studies completed, each midwife works in a rural health center in her home region, supporting deliveries and antenatal and postnatal care, proving family planning, nutrition and hygiene information, and contributing to the prevention of harmful traditional practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Through their engagement with the entire population, they act as role models for the communities they serve.
Training in midwifery gives young women a professional qualification and a chance to earn their own wage, breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty and encouraging others to aspire to the same. Meet our midwives here
Pelvic Floor Breathing Techniques for Easier Birth
We coordinate workshops at HCM in Basic Body Awareness Therapy (BBAT), a holistic approach of whole-person care, and fund the tuition of Hamlin physiotherapists to complete their Master of Physiotherapy in BBAT Methodology so they can lead the workshops themselves. Combined with our workshops in Nonviolent Communication with final year midwifery students at HCM, we are encouraging deeper connections through compassionate care, enabling mothers to feel at ease and comforted, facilitating a smoother birth process.
Ongoing Training for Qualified Midwives in managing obstetric and neonatal emergencies
GreenLamp has a partnership with the Atsede Clinic funding Project STONE, which aims to improve the skill set of the midwives working in the SNNPR region of Ethiopia focusing on management of obstetric and neonatal emergencies.
For an in-depth look into the environmental factors and needs of the local population, as well as our holistic approach, please see our concept paper
Inspired to help us improve the access to and quality of education and healthcare for women in rural Ethiopia?
Light
Greenlamp’s solar system initiative provides sustainable, clean power, improving safety and protecting patient dignity in rural delivery wards where there is no reliable power and light. We install solar systems at rural health centres where graduated midwives are deployed, providing power for surgical-quality lighting and charging of cell phones for emergency referrals, a foetal doppler, and solar fridges for storing vital medicine and vaccines. This enhances the midwives’ ability to provide safer birthing conditions, specifically preventing postpartum haemorrhage – the leading cause of maternal death worldwide – with the drug oxytocin, which needs to be kept in a cold chain.
The simple presence of the solar systems greatly encourages women to come to the health centres, resulting in an increase in safe deliveries, an increase in the the 4 prenatal visits as recommended by the World Health Organization, more families bringing their newborn in for a postnatal check-up and more women coming for family planning and reproductive health advice.
Working closely with the Hamlin College of Midwives, We Care Solar, and the Solar Energy Foundation, GreenLamp has funded, installed and maintains over 250 solar systems in Ethiopia, reaching over 1 million women of reproductive age.
Inspired to help us provide sustainable, clean power, improving safety and protecting patient dignity in rural delivery wards in rural Ethiopia?
Lead
Access to education and training gives women the skills and confidence to help and lead others in their community, creating a positive and far-reaching ripple effect. Once trained, our midwives not only assist women in labour, they also lead community outreach initiatives to advise on matters such as family planning, infant nutrition, and prevention of harmful traditional practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which in turn give women greater control of their own futures and their children’s. GreenLamp supports midwives through the following programmes:
Best Practice and Professional Development for Midwives
An exchange of midwives’ best practice and personal and professional development at the Hamlin Midwives Alumni Network (HMAN) annual regional meetings, often involving days of travelling for midwives working in remote areas. The meetings are organised in cooperation with the Hamlin College of Midwives (HCM) and are a key part of our work to encourage midwives in developing their confidence and capability, both to lead in their local communities and within the health profession.
Fostering compassionate care at rural health centres
Promoting Knowledge and Skills Transfer
Improving Women’s Healthcare in the Simien Mountains
For more details on the Nonviolent Communication concept visit www.cnvc.org
For an in-depth look into the environmental factors and needs of the local population, as well as our holistic approach, please see our concept paper
Inspired to help us provide access to education and training to give rural Ethiopian women the skills and confidence to help and lead others in their community?
Our Impact
Thanks to our generous supporters, partners and plenty of hard work, positive outcomes have been achieved in rural Ethiopia since 2012 :
Over 250 solar systems and medical equipment provided to rural health centres
A combined figure of 48 young women sponsored to complete BSc university programs in midwifery;
377 students have benefitted from our skills building programmes, contributing to more confident and competent midwives
213 rural midwives have benefitted from an alumni network to develop their voice and leadership skills, enabling them to effect change in their rural communities
304,608 births have been supported by rural midwives using solar light, assisting in safer and more dignified birthing conditions
Classrooms provided with 18 laptop computers, birth simulator dolls and medical literature
Watch our video for an overview of all GreenLamp projects:
We need your support to continue our impact in rural Ethiopia. Please consider making a donation, thank you.
Become a Member
Members are the ‘rocks’ of our community, they motivate us, support us, generate new ideas, and help us to advance our goals and make a greater impact. If you want to meet like-minded people, get to know us and the multi-faceted work we do through our exclusive Membership Circle events, then please sign-up and join us.
Volunteer with Us
Volunteers are the lifeblood of GreenLamp, contributing their skills, time and networks to create a team that punches above its weight. If you have a specific area of expertise or skill-set that you think could benefit GreenLamp, we’d love to hear from you. We especially appreciate volunteers providing surge capacity around our events where we need all hands on deck.
Become a Member
Members are the ‘rocks’ of our community, they motivate us, support us, generate new ideas, and help us to advance our goals and make a greater impact. If you want to meet like-minded people, get to know us and the multi-faceted work we do through our exclusive Membership Circle events, then please sign-up and join us.
Volunteer with Us
Volunteers are the lifeblood of GreenLamp, contributing their skills, time and networks to create a team that punches above its weight. If you have a specific area of expertise or skill-set that you think could benefit GreenLamp, we’d love to hear from you. We especially appreciate volunteers providing surge capacity around our events where we need all hands on deck.