The Development Expertise Center (DEC) has been working for more than 14 years in Ethiopia to facilitate child-centred comprehensive development intervention to create a safe and conducive environment to fulfil the best interest of children.
The unique aspect of DEC is that it is a child-centred organisation, which works in partnership with grassroots communities, government structures, donors, and other key stakeholders. DEC also has good track records of accomplishment in designing ad successfully implementing various projects and programmes.
DEC is focused on different development programmes and has four departments working on Child Development, Skills & Entrepreneurship Development, Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR), and Lobby and Advocacy. The organisation works in the Education sector, giving supplementary training and school facilities for the school community, participating in emergency programmes in conflict areas, desert areas or in vulnerable communities to support shelter, NFI, food and psycho-social support. Development Expertise Center is really proud of being able to include the excluded members of society with their education programmes.
Our Partnership
DEC Ethiopia has been partnered with Aflatoun International since 2018 and uses the Aflatoun programmes for non-formal education. They decided to join our network because of their strong affinity with our programmes, especially concerning child development. The aspects that most intrigued them about Aflatoun were personal understanding, saving and spending, and social and financial enterprise.
DEC believes that social and financial education is fundamental for the Ethiopian community as they have observed children start saving money at the bank, they have improved their communications skills with peers, and children with disability have been included in social and financial education programmes.
1300 Children Educated On Entrepreneurship, Life Skills And Financial Education
DEC’s projects on social and financial education have been positively improving through Aflatoun concepts and methodologies. DEC implements the programmes on a weekly basis at 19 special need schools, rehabilitation centres and disability associations in Addis Ababa. As a result, they have reached over 1300 children, who learnt about entrepreneurship, saving and life skills, etc. DEC also trained and enrolled 12 teachers with a disability.
In addition to the regular programme, the project successfully connected Ethiopian children with their Dutch counterparts through the “klas4klas” programme and this has resulted in increased self-confidence, self-esteem and communication for the children.
