Action for Adolescents Girls: The Assets Framework
As part of United Nations Population Fund’s strategic plan and dedication to reaching the most vulnerable populations, they are working on updating the Adolescent and Youth Strategy with a specific programme called Action for Adolescent Girls: “Every adolescent and youth, in particular adolescent girls, is empowered to have access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, in all contexts.” The global programme was launched in 2014 and aligned with the aims of the ICPD (a refresher to the ICPD can be found in this blog post) and goals of UNFPA, specifically ending child marriage and reducing adolescent pregnancies.
The Arab region has over 100 million people between the ages of 15-29, roughly 30% of the region’s population, which is the largest young population in the world. This poses a great opportunity for the region to capitalize upon its demographic dividend. The demographic dividend is the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 to 64) is larger than the non-working-age share of the population (14 and younger, and 65 and older. When a society has a healthy working population and smaller household sizes, that allows for more investment per child, gives women more time to enter the workforce, and can create a powerful economic boom. In order to realize the demographic dividend, societies need to invest in capacity-building of their population, particularly increasing the quality of education and employment opportunities for youth, especially adolescent girls and women. When girls are removed from school, marry and have children young, and are unable to access proper reproductive healthcare, the dividend cannot be achieved. Therefore, without the resources, support, political will, and opportunities, youth are prevented from making change in their communities.
The Action for Adolescent Girls programme aims to build the health, economic, cognitive and social assets of girls through education and mentorship. There are approximately 40 million girls in the Arab region and while adolescence (ages 10-19) is a critical time for development and self expression, it is also an incredibly vulnerable time for girls. For example, in the Arab region 55% of girls are subjected to FGM and 1 in 5 girls are married before they are 18 in this region. As such, creating a targeted curriculum to support girls in realizing their human rights and working with communities to create behavioral changes, can have a positive impact on the harmful practices.
The Action for Adolescent Girls programme is centered around an Assets Framework, which is a contextualized curriculum aiming to build the social, health and economic assets of girls, particularly the most vulnerable and those at the highest risk of harmful practices. According to UNFPA, the methodology of the Assets Framework is multifaceted and uses a variety of learning styles and techniques such as theatre, art, music and sports. The assets framework programme will include the following in order to build the capacity of girls in the region:
The teaching sessions will take place in a safe space so girls feel comfortable expressing themselves, their concerns, and their hopes for the future. For a more detailed and comprehensive look at the UNFPA Action for Adolescent Girl Strategy, see here.
This programme to date has been piloted in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, Guatemala, Haiti, Laos, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria and have seen positive results.
Bangladesh made concrete policy and programme investments focused on school enrollment and preventing child marriage. To address school enrollment, they implemented after-school programmes for girls focused on life skills. Furthermore from 1999 to 2011, the rate of child marriage dropped from 27% to 17%.
In Niger, they implemented girls’ groups in 4 districts from 2013 to 2014, reaching about 1,550 girls. The girls’ groups were led by trained mentors in safe spaces that taught literacy, carried out health checks home visits and held community dialogues about behavioral changes. At the start of the program 1 in 10 girls knew how to prevent pregnancy compared to 9 in 10 girls at the end of the first year. The use of contraception doubled with this intervention. At the start of the program 1 in 5 girls could read the alphabet and after one year, 3 in 5 girls were able to read the alphabet. Finally, at the conclusion of the program 93% of girls believed it was their right to choose their spouse and wanted to delay marriage until at least 19 years of age.
Guatemala successfully reached out to 10,000 rural/ indigenous adolescent girls through weekly sessions in safe spaces.
As the programme has been successful in other areas of the world, the Arab States Regional Office is now contextualizing the framework to the Arab language and culture in order to implement the Action for Adolescent Girls programme in this region.. I have been fortunate enough to be included on this project and have worked on a presentation given to possible donors, participated in sessions about how to contextualize the curriculum to girls living in this region, and co-created the project document which included a monitoring & evaluation framework, budget, and logframe.
The Arab region is not only different from the countries the programme was originally piloted in in, but the countries within the Arab region are quite diverse and have variant needs to be addressed through the asset framework curriculum. Therefore, a process guide will also be developed so that each country and each community can adapt the framework to their own specificities. While there is much work to be done, I am so excited to see this project gain traction and plan to keep my eye on it when I am back in NYC!
The Arab region has over 100 million people between the ages of 15-29, roughly 30% of the region’s population, which is the largest young population in the world. This poses a great opportunity for the region to capitalize upon its demographic dividend. The demographic dividend is the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 to 64) is larger than the non-working-age share of the population (14 and younger, and 65 and older. When a society has a healthy working population and smaller household sizes, that allows for more investment per child, gives women more time to enter the workforce, and can create a powerful economic boom. In order to realize the demographic dividend, societies need to invest in capacity-building of their population, particularly increasing the quality of education and employment opportunities for youth, especially adolescent girls and women. When girls are removed from school, marry and have children young, and are unable to access proper reproductive healthcare, the dividend cannot be achieved. Therefore, without the resources, support, political will, and opportunities, youth are prevented from making change in their communities.
The Action for Adolescent Girls programme aims to build the health, economic, cognitive and social assets of girls through education and mentorship. There are approximately 40 million girls in the Arab region and while adolescence (ages 10-19) is a critical time for development and self expression, it is also an incredibly vulnerable time for girls. For example, in the Arab region 55% of girls are subjected to FGM and 1 in 5 girls are married before they are 18 in this region. As such, creating a targeted curriculum to support girls in realizing their human rights and working with communities to create behavioral changes, can have a positive impact on the harmful practices.
The Action for Adolescent Girls programme is centered around an Assets Framework, which is a contextualized curriculum aiming to build the social, health and economic assets of girls, particularly the most vulnerable and those at the highest risk of harmful practices. According to UNFPA, the methodology of the Assets Framework is multifaceted and uses a variety of learning styles and techniques such as theatre, art, music and sports. The assets framework programme will include the following in order to build the capacity of girls in the region:
- Investment in and support for married and unmarried girls by building their assets
- Providing safe spaces for girls to interact and network;
- Recruiting older adolescent girls (15-19 years of age) as mentors and agents of change;
- Engaging the community in changing the norms around girls gender roles and;
- Catalyzing shifts towards positive policies and frameworks.
The teaching sessions will take place in a safe space so girls feel comfortable expressing themselves, their concerns, and their hopes for the future. For a more detailed and comprehensive look at the UNFPA Action for Adolescent Girl Strategy, see here.
This programme to date has been piloted in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, Guatemala, Haiti, Laos, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria and have seen positive results.
Bangladesh made concrete policy and programme investments focused on school enrollment and preventing child marriage. To address school enrollment, they implemented after-school programmes for girls focused on life skills. Furthermore from 1999 to 2011, the rate of child marriage dropped from 27% to 17%.
In Niger, they implemented girls’ groups in 4 districts from 2013 to 2014, reaching about 1,550 girls. The girls’ groups were led by trained mentors in safe spaces that taught literacy, carried out health checks home visits and held community dialogues about behavioral changes. At the start of the program 1 in 10 girls knew how to prevent pregnancy compared to 9 in 10 girls at the end of the first year. The use of contraception doubled with this intervention. At the start of the program 1 in 5 girls could read the alphabet and after one year, 3 in 5 girls were able to read the alphabet. Finally, at the conclusion of the program 93% of girls believed it was their right to choose their spouse and wanted to delay marriage until at least 19 years of age.
Guatemala successfully reached out to 10,000 rural/ indigenous adolescent girls through weekly sessions in safe spaces.
- All girl leaders completed 6th grade as compared to 80% at national level
- 72% of girl participants stayed in school vs national average at 53%
- 94% of girl leaders reported experiencing greater autonomy and feeling more comfortable expressing their opinions,
- 84% said their role at home had improved during the programme cycle
- Increased the likelihood of engaging in income generating activities by 72% (mostly self employment)
- Raised expenditure on private consumption goods by 38%
- Decreased teen pregnancy by 26%
- Decreased early entry into marriage/cohabitation by 58%
- Decreased experience of sexual assault against girls by 50%
- Increased aspired ages of marriage and childbearing
As the programme has been successful in other areas of the world, the Arab States Regional Office is now contextualizing the framework to the Arab language and culture in order to implement the Action for Adolescent Girls programme in this region.. I have been fortunate enough to be included on this project and have worked on a presentation given to possible donors, participated in sessions about how to contextualize the curriculum to girls living in this region, and co-created the project document which included a monitoring & evaluation framework, budget, and logframe.
The Arab region is not only different from the countries the programme was originally piloted in in, but the countries within the Arab region are quite diverse and have variant needs to be addressed through the asset framework curriculum. Therefore, a process guide will also be developed so that each country and each community can adapt the framework to their own specificities. While there is much work to be done, I am so excited to see this project gain traction and plan to keep my eye on it when I am back in NYC!
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