Soul Beat Africa
African development action with informed and engaged societies
Soul Beat Africa
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Gender-transformative Mentoring and Cash Transfer - 50% or More Reduction in Marriage Likelihood

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Strategy researched

Facilitated lifeskills sessions, caregiver discussion groups, savings start-up for girls, community action events, and capacity strengthening for local health and psychosocial service providers (with the GE+ variation adding an incentive payment to caregivers tied to girls' participation in weekly sessions)

Impact achieved

Both intervention arms had moderate and statistically significant effects on three domains: gender attitudes, life skills, and sexual and reproductive health (SRH). The effects of both GE and GE+ were above 0.2 standard deviation (SD) for all three indices, and as large as 0.37 SD for the SRH index in GE+. Beneficiaries of both programmes were less likely to be accepting of intimate partner violence (IPV), and they showed a better understanding of condom effectiveness, HIV/AIDS, and financial matters. They were also 3.6 percentage points (or 46%) less likely to be married, had a lower number of sexual partners (0.58 fewer partners, 43% lower), and were more likely to practice safer sex compared with the control group. The effect size on the SRH index, as well as each of its components, was approximately 50% higher in GE+ than GE. GE+ reduced the likelihood of marriage and the number of sexual partners in the past 12 months by more than 50%.

Country of study

Liberia

Research methodology

Parallel cluster RCT

Journal

SSM - Population Health; 2020

Journal paper title and link

Girl Empower - A gender transformative mentoring and cash transfer intervention to promote adolescent wellbeing: Impact findings from a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Liberia

Excerpt from Abstract

"Girl Empower led to sustained improvements in several important domains, including SRH, but did not reduce sexual violence among the target population."

Summary at this link