News
Planning Workshop on Fashion Schools
The Center for Accelerated Women’s Economic Empowerment (CAWEE) partnering with the International Trade Center (ITC) is working on a joint project to build the capacities of selected fashion schools, where special focus is given in reviewing the existing curriculums of those fashion schools. Next Fashion Design Institute and Wossi International Fashion Design Institute from the private institutions, Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute (ETIDI) and Ethiopian Institute of Textile and Fashion Technology (EITEX), Baherdar University from the government are involved in the project.
The workshop was held on December 19, 2015 at the Mosaic Hotel to discuss issues related to the improvement of the curriculums of the fashion institutes as well as issues relating to capacity building of the institutions.
The meeting was opened by State Minster, H.E. Tadesse Haile, from Ministry of Industry. The Minister highlighted the importance of textile industry to the second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP 2) and the growth of the sector to the Ethiopian economy, stating that support to women involved in this sector being also a priority. H. E. highlighted that, textile and leather are very important to the Ethiopian economy, they are the two leading industries in the GTP 2, especially textile industry, where the goal is for Ethiopia to be the leader in light manufacturing industry in Africa, mentioning that the goal is to reach the heights of Vietnam and Bangladesh in the growth of the textile sector, within the next 5 years.
The meeting focused on the curriculum that was reviewed by an expert from the Parsons New School of Design, New York. The discussion underlined that, even though the curriculum is revised, there are challenges in adapting the revised curriculum by Parson directly to both the Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) curriculum based institutes as well as at university degree and graduate level programs. The workshop was thus concluded with a plan proposing to revise the existing Ethiopian curriculum of the fashion institutes focusing particularly on the curriculum of the TVET institutions.