Before the project
As Awugichew stated, the cause of his street life is the conflict between his grandmother and his mother-in-law followed by the selling of the house in which they had been living in. Then he started to be addicted to Chat(local street drug) and Cigarette and his grandmother declined to have him back consequently. He decided to lead street life by moving to Adama City from Kality Sub City. He found it very tough so that he pledged to come back home, but grandmother rejected him hence forced to live in Addis Ababa Street for 1½ years. Later, he heard about SDE from his other friends, applied and joined in 2012 and graduated on bead making and tailoring skills in 2013.
After the project:
While Awugichew was in the project, he had been expressing an intense interest and potential for artistic fields-specially for theatre. Therefore he had been employed in Gulele Sub City Culture and Tourism Office and worked there for a short period of time and moved to press enterprise and worked there agin for short period. Next, he decided to upgrade his tailoring skill and joined design and fashion training institute named Miracle, graduated, and formed microenterprise association and now working in a group as designer.
His Current status:
Awugichew and his other three friends have group venture called Lucks Tailoring Private Limited Association and have now bought three industrial machines. He is now 26 and bold and courageous enough to say goodbye to the street life. He gets satisfactory income with this job and he is very happy by this enterprise. He is also a third-year collage student in Entoto Technical and Vocational Collage.
His Opinion:
He said "I feel my wealth shall be more knowledge and skills, hence I want to learn more. The technical and the life skill training that I got at SDE and also the book I read in the project titled "The Miracle” are the very causes for my growth and development. I strongly beleive life skill training at SDE strengthenes people's perspective about life and themselves and brings behavioral changes. Finally, I would like to thank SDE for what it has done to me”