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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Bangladesh: Covid-19 Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices & Needs—Responses From Three Rounds Of Data Collection Among Adolescent Girls In Districts With High Rates Of Child Marriage, Sajeda Amin, Ubaidur Rob, Sigma Ainul, Md. Irfan Hossain, Forhana Rahman Noor, Iqbal Ehsan, Mehnaz Manzur Nov 2020

Bangladesh: Covid-19 Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices & Needs—Responses From Three Rounds Of Data Collection Among Adolescent Girls In Districts With High Rates Of Child Marriage, Sajeda Amin, Ubaidur Rob, Sigma Ainul, Md. Irfan Hossain, Forhana Rahman Noor, Iqbal Ehsan, Mehnaz Manzur

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

From April 20–30, 2020, during a nationwide lockdown, the Population Council Bangladesh conducted the first round of a rapid phone-based survey on COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, and practices. The survey randomly selected girls who had provided phone numbers during enrollment in a skills-building program that began before the pandemic. The survey’s objective was to assess the impact of COVID-19 on adolescent lives and to design programs that would contribute to protecting girls and meet social distancing guidelines imposed by the government. Phone interviews were conducted with 479 girls living in the districts of Chapainawabganj, Kushtia, and Sherpur who were participants in …


Characteristics Of Brokers In Relation To The Migration Of Girls And Young Women In Ethiopia, Annabel Erulkar Oct 2020

Characteristics Of Brokers In Relation To The Migration Of Girls And Young Women In Ethiopia, Annabel Erulkar

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This research brief focuses on brokers in Ethiopia—both licensed and unlicensed—who place migrating girls into jobs such as domestic work, waitressing, and commercial sex work. The characteristics of brokers, their contacts, ways of working, and how brokers both support and harm migrant girls is examined. Brokers sometimes provide support to girls that goes beyond job placement, such as providing girls with necessary help in their initial days, including financial assistance, short-term lodging, and food. Alternatively, brokers can be a source of considerable risk for girls. It was reported that brokers often exploit newly arriving girls for sex, expose them to …


Abriendo Oportunidades Strengthens Government Education Programming For Indigenous Adolescent Girls In Guatemala, Population Council Oct 2020

Abriendo Oportunidades Strengthens Government Education Programming For Indigenous Adolescent Girls In Guatemala, Population Council

Research Utilization and Impact Briefs

For over 15 years, Abriendo Oportunidades has partnered with national and local authorities to improve educational prospects for indigenous girls. In Guatemala, evidence and ongoing technical assistance have helped to strengthen and expand the Ministry of Education’s alternative education programs for adolescents, ensuring they are responsive to the needs of indigenous rural communities.


Measuring Empowerment Among Adolescent Girls In The Context Of Intervention, Population Council Jul 2020

Measuring Empowerment Among Adolescent Girls In The Context Of Intervention, Population Council

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Empowerment is an important goal in adolescent girl programming but remains elusive and unobserved from a quantitative measurement perspective. This brief describes a statistical exercise conducted to explore adolescent girl empowerment as a latent or underlying concept that, while not directly observed, may be illustrated through responses to questions on behaviors and attitudes asked in quantitative structured interviews. Data were used from a randomized controlled trial that demonstrated the impact in delaying girls’ age at marriage in rural Bangladeshi communities with a high prevalence of child marriage. The study collected extensive data on potential measures of voice, choice, and agency …


Building Assets For Humanitarian Settings, Women's Refugee Commission, Population Council Jun 2020

Building Assets For Humanitarian Settings, Women's Refugee Commission, Population Council

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This document is the Women’s Refugee Commission and the Population Council’s adaptation of the Building Assets Toolkit and its core activity, the Asset Exercise, for use in humanitarian contexts. An asset-building exercise is a thoughtful way to build intentional program content for girls to determine what assets they need in order to survive and thrive. This is particularly important for programs intended to reach the poorest girls in the poorest communities based on sound evidence on the reality of their lives. The Council’s Building Assets Toolkit is rooted in this exercise, helping practitioners, policymakers, and advocates build tailored, meaningful, …


Evidence Review: Promoting Adolescent Girls' Health And Well-Being In Low-Resource Settings In The Era Of Covid-19, Sarah Blake, Miriam Temin, Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (Agip) Evidence Subcommittee Jun 2020

Evidence Review: Promoting Adolescent Girls' Health And Well-Being In Low-Resource Settings In The Era Of Covid-19, Sarah Blake, Miriam Temin, Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (Agip) Evidence Subcommittee

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Adolescent girls are among the groups intended to benefit from measures governments enact to control COVID-19, such as travel restrictions and business and school closures. However, given the dual disadvantage adolescent girls face due to age and gender, even approaches that effectively reduce the threat of COVID-19 transmission may exacerbate other threats to their health, safety, and well-being. In response, governments, multilateral agencies, and non-governmental organizations have moved to address these risks, though evidence to support investment decision-making is limited. Clarity on the type, degree, and strength of the evidence in support of interventions that promote adolescent girls’ health and …


Creative Assets And Program Content Guide: To Build Social And Emotional Learning And Promote Trauma Mitigation And Healing, Adolescent Girl And Creativity Network Jun 2020

Creative Assets And Program Content Guide: To Build Social And Emotional Learning And Promote Trauma Mitigation And Healing, Adolescent Girl And Creativity Network

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

In 2016, the Adolescent Girl and Creativity Network was commissioned by the Population Council’s Community of Practice to utilize their wealth of knowledge and field experience to critically examine, adapt, and expand the Council’s Building Assets Toolkit© and complementary Asset Exercise. The question explored was: What are the essential assets pertinent to the most-at-risk girls and how can they be built through creative techniques/activities? This guide is the result of that activity—13 creative assets and 50 activities (program content) to build social and emotional learning, mitigate and manage trauma, and promote healing. The 50 creative program content activities to …


Bangladesh: Covid-19 Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices And Needs—Responses From The First Round Of Data Collection Among Adolescent Girls In Five Districts, Population Council Jun 2020

Bangladesh: Covid-19 Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices And Needs—Responses From The First Round Of Data Collection Among Adolescent Girls In Five Districts, Population Council

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

The Population Council Bangladesh conducted the first round of a series of rapid phone-based surveys on COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, and practices and the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 on adolescent girls. The first COVID-19 positive patient in Bangladesh was reported on March 8, 2020. The advent of COVID-19 triggered the closure of all educational institutions. A nationwide “holiday” was declared on March 26, 2020, and a ban was implemented on all passenger travel by water, rail, and air. These restrictions have been partially relaxed, but the disease is spreading rapidly with 28,511 positive cases and 408 deaths as of …


Reducing Hiv Risk Among Young Women And Their Partners: Highlights From The Dreams Implementation Science Research Portfolio, Population Council Jun 2020

Reducing Hiv Risk Among Young Women And Their Partners: Highlights From The Dreams Implementation Science Research Portfolio, Population Council

HIV and AIDS

The Population Council, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development through Project SOAR, led a set of implementation science studies to capture multiple perspectives that reflect the innovative aspects of DREAMS. These mixed-method studies conducted across seven countries (Eswatini, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) provide critical evidence that fill knowledge gaps on how to reduce HIV risk among AGYW and their male partners. This brief presents key findings grouped around four areas of inquiry: 1) HIV vulnerability and risk; 2) social drivers of HIV risk; 3) effects of …


Adolescent Girls Initiative–Kenya: Endline Evaluation Report, Karen Austrian, Erica Soler-Hampejsek, Beth Kangwana, Nicole Maddox, Yohannes Dibaba Wado, Benta Abuya, Valsa Shah, John A. Maluccio May 2020

Adolescent Girls Initiative–Kenya: Endline Evaluation Report, Karen Austrian, Erica Soler-Hampejsek, Beth Kangwana, Nicole Maddox, Yohannes Dibaba Wado, Benta Abuya, Valsa Shah, John A. Maluccio

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Early pregnancy is a challenge for girls in Kenya that often has immediate effects on their educational opportunities, future implications for their social, health, and economic outcomes, and negative impacts on their children. For girls to achieve well-being in early and late adolescence, no single-sector intervention—whether education, health, wealth creation, or prevention of violence—will be adequate. The Adolescent Girls Initiative–Kenya (AGI-K) delivered multisectoral interventions to over 6,000 girls aged 11–15 in two marginalized areas of Kenya: the Kibera informal settlement in Nairobi and Wajir County in Northeastern Kenya. These interventions were carried out for two years (2015–17) and comprised a …


Covid-19-Related Knowledge, Attitudes, And Practices Among Adolescent Girls In Bangladesh: Concept Note, Sajeda Amin May 2020

Covid-19-Related Knowledge, Attitudes, And Practices Among Adolescent Girls In Bangladesh: Concept Note, Sajeda Amin

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

The Population Council COVID-19 study team is implementing rapid phone-based surveys of a representative sample of girls living in the catchment area of two skills-building programs. The two programs (one with UNFPA, the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs; and the second with UNICEF and the Ministry of Education/DSHE) are affiliated with the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage. The overall goal of the programs is to prevent child marriage. The rapid assessment will explore how the pandemic and associated lockdown is changing girls' experience of schooling, time use, care responsibilities and household scarcity as mediating …


Bangladesh: Covid-19 Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices And Needs, Population Council May 2020

Bangladesh: Covid-19 Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices And Needs, Population Council

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

No abstract provided.


Adapting The Asset Exercise For Humanitarian Contexts, Women's Refugee Commission, Population Council Apr 2020

Adapting The Asset Exercise For Humanitarian Contexts, Women's Refugee Commission, Population Council

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

As a guiding program theory, asset-building centers on the idea that skills, knowledge, relationships, and concrete resources can all constitute assets, or “stores of value,” that girls can, in turn, mobilize to make healthy choices, seek support, navigate institutions, and access entitlements. This approach is inherently multisectoral, rooted in a commitment to prioritize understanding of and respond to the diversity of girls’ needs, capacities, and experiences. The Asset Exercise operationalizes the concept of “asset-building” into concrete terms. The exercise consists of a deck of 100 “asset cards,” and eight “age cards.” Asset cards reflect both intrinsic qualities, concrete knowledge, and …


Can Adolescent Girls' Safe Space Clubs Effectively Run Solar-Powered Mobile Phone Charging Stations In Rural Sierra Leone?, Nadia Assad, Sarah Blake Apr 2020

Can Adolescent Girls' Safe Space Clubs Effectively Run Solar-Powered Mobile Phone Charging Stations In Rural Sierra Leone?, Nadia Assad, Sarah Blake

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Access to electricity in rural Sierra Leone is scarce. Estimates on the proportion of households having regular access to electricity range from 1 to 5 percent. Along with mobile phones, which are now common even in settings where phone lines never reached, new energy technologies are beginning to fill in where traditional infrastructure is absent. Solar technologies hold promise for expanding access to electricity while offering sustainable alternatives to expensive, nonrenewable sources for powering lights, phones, tools, and appliances. Recognizing that there is important learning to be done in connecting adolescent girls’ clubs and solar technologies, the Population Council conducted …


Abriendo Futuros: A Program For Rural Indigenous Girls In Yucatan, Mexico, Fabiola Romero, Ludivine Cicolella, Silvana Larrea, A. Fallone, Isabel Vieitez Martínez Mar 2020

Abriendo Futuros: A Program For Rural Indigenous Girls In Yucatan, Mexico, Fabiola Romero, Ludivine Cicolella, Silvana Larrea, A. Fallone, Isabel Vieitez Martínez

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

The Abriendo Futuros (AF) program builds on the Council’s global experience of designing and implementing successful girl-centered programs in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean. AF aims to improve the living conditions of Mayan girls (10–18 years) and contribute to the achievement of gender equity in the Yucatan. The program’s community-focused strategy seeks to empower girls through interpersonal communication and participatory workshops. Girls in selected communities are divided into age groups (10–14 and 15–18) that meet weekly with a mentor in safe spaces. The program’s mentors are young women aged 20–30 from the communities, who …


Evidence To Support Hiv Prevention For Adolescent Girls And Young Women (Agyw) And Their Male Partners: Results From Malawi Dreams Studies With Agyw, Male Partners Of Agyw, Men Living With Hiv, And Program Implementing Partners, Nanlesta Pilgrim, Victor Mwapasa, Effie Chipeta, Wanangwa Chimwaza, Nrupa Jani, Tracy Mcclair, Lyson Tenthani, Sanyukta Mathur Feb 2020

Evidence To Support Hiv Prevention For Adolescent Girls And Young Women (Agyw) And Their Male Partners: Results From Malawi Dreams Studies With Agyw, Male Partners Of Agyw, Men Living With Hiv, And Program Implementing Partners, Nanlesta Pilgrim, Victor Mwapasa, Effie Chipeta, Wanangwa Chimwaza, Nrupa Jani, Tracy Mcclair, Lyson Tenthani, Sanyukta Mathur

HIV and AIDS

Project SOAR, led by the Population Council, in partnership with the Center of Reproductive Health at the University of Malawi College of Medicine, conducted a research portfolio to generate evidence to reduce HIV risk among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) and their male partners. The objectives of this implementation research were to generate evidence for describing HIV-related risk factors among AGYW; assess the extent to which the overall DREAMS project contributed toward the goal of reducing HIV risk among AGYW; and understand the characteristics of male partners and how to link them to HIV services, as well as retain …


Understanding Local Variation In How Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Declines, Changes, Or Persists: Analysis Of Household Survey Data For Kenya, Nigeria, And Senegal, Population Reference Bureau Feb 2020

Understanding Local Variation In How Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Declines, Changes, Or Persists: Analysis Of Household Survey Data For Kenya, Nigeria, And Senegal, Population Reference Bureau

Reproductive Health

Efforts to eliminate female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) intensified in many parts of Africa following a 2012 United Nations General Assembly Resolution, but change has been uneven. Important evidence gaps remain in our understanding of why the practice declines, changes, or persists in specific locations. Policymakers and program planners need such information to better tailor interventions to address local patterns and focus resources on abandonment efforts in areas with the greatest needs. To fill these gaps, researchers with the Evidence to End FGM/C consortium analyzed nationally representative household survey data for Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. The results of their research identify …


Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting In Nigeria: Is The Practice Declining? A Descriptive Analysis Of Successive Demographic And Health Surveys And Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (2003–2017), Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala, Glory Atilola, Chibuzor Christopher Nnanatu, Emmanuel Ogundimu, Lubanzadio Mavatikua, Paul Komba, Zhuzhi Moore, Dennis Matanda Feb 2020

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting In Nigeria: Is The Practice Declining? A Descriptive Analysis Of Successive Demographic And Health Surveys And Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (2003–2017), Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala, Glory Atilola, Chibuzor Christopher Nnanatu, Emmanuel Ogundimu, Lubanzadio Mavatikua, Paul Komba, Zhuzhi Moore, Dennis Matanda

Reproductive Health

This report gives insight into the scale and scope of the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) among women aged 15–49 years and girls younger than 15 years in Nigeria. It also presents evidence on where FGM/C occurs and highlights the dynamics of change as well as the context surrounding the practice. The report explores in detail the practice of FGM/C from all available sources of nationally representative survey data from 2003 to 2017 and the most relevant contextual information on key factors associated over time with FGM/C. The ultimate objective of the report is to generate evidence to inform …


Modelling And Mapping Of State Disparities Associated With Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Prevalence Among Girls Aged 0–14 Years In Nigeria: Evidence From Dhs And Mics 2003–2017, Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala, Paul Komba, Chibuzor Christopher Nnanatu, Glory Atilola, Lubanzadio Mavatikua, Zhuzhi Moore, Dennis Matanda Jan 2020

Modelling And Mapping Of State Disparities Associated With Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Prevalence Among Girls Aged 0–14 Years In Nigeria: Evidence From Dhs And Mics 2003–2017, Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala, Paul Komba, Chibuzor Christopher Nnanatu, Glory Atilola, Lubanzadio Mavatikua, Zhuzhi Moore, Dennis Matanda

Reproductive Health

The practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) has been positioned as a gender and global development issue that national and international organizations must address for girls and women to thrive in good health and enjoy their fundamental rights. Consequently, many efforts have been made to promote the abandonment of the practice. Despite evidence of a decline in FGM/C, there are significant variations in its prevalence in many sub-Saharan African countries, where the practice persists due to the combined effects of factors among individuals as well as communities. This working paper presents findings from a study that analyzed existing data using …


Population Council Annual Evaluation Report: Opening Futures (Abriendo Futuros) For Indigenous Girls In Yucatan, Mexico, Silvana Larrea Jan 2020

Population Council Annual Evaluation Report: Opening Futures (Abriendo Futuros) For Indigenous Girls In Yucatan, Mexico, Silvana Larrea

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This Population Council Annual Evaluation Report includes evaluation activities from December 1, 2015 to December 1, 2019, and future evaluation plans (2019–21), as part of the Opening Futures (Abriendo Futuros) project for indigenous girls in Yucatan, Mexico. The first section describes the finalized analysis of the impact evaluation of the pilot phase; the second section reports the progress of evaluation activities; and the third section includes an evaluation of future plans for the period December 1, 2019 to November 30, 2021.


Do You Know? A Resilience Challenge Game For Native American Girls, Kelly Hallman, Kassel Franco Garibay, Stephanie Martinez, Lisa Polen Jan 2020

Do You Know? A Resilience Challenge Game For Native American Girls, Kelly Hallman, Kassel Franco Garibay, Stephanie Martinez, Lisa Polen

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

The Indigenous Adolescent Girls’ Empowerment Network (IMAGEN) is an initiative within Indian Country seeking to strengthen the protection, safety, and resilience of girls in Native communities by reclaiming neighborhood spaces in which to rekindle matrilineal traditions. Housed within the Girl Innovation, Research, and Learning (GIRL) Center, IMAGEN’s evidence-based approach consists of a set of adaptable planning tools honed over 20 years in global settings that enables the establishment of neighborhood safe spaces for girls. IMAGEN's resilience Cards are an asset-building resource designed for program leaders who are planning to work with adolescent indigenous girls.