Girls' Clubs and Empowerment Programmes

"This note highlights examples of girls’ clubs that have led to increasingly gender equitable attitudes and practices, from programmes in Burkina Faso to Bangladesh."

This research and practice note from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) explores girls clubs as a strategy to empower adolescent girls. It discusses the potential, limitations, and recommendations to enhance the positive contribution that clubs can make to girls’ lives. It is part of the Knowledge to Action Resource Series 2015, produced as part of a 4-year programme - ‘Transforming the Lives of Adolescent Girls’ – involving evaluations of fieldwork in Ethiopia, Uganda, Nepal, and Viet Nam and a review of communications programmes and secondary literature. 

Aims of the clubs include, for example:

• In Ethiopia, the Amhara Development Association Girls’ Club Initiative in Ethiopia aims to improve girls' awareness of their sexual and reproductive health rights and improve their health outcomes. It is run by trained teachers who expect the girls involved to spread messages to peers. A 2014 evaluation reported a 'secret club' in one of the club districts that helped girls anonymously report sexual harassment by teachers. 
• In Nepal, in-school and out-of-school girls, aged 11-21, are provided vocational training, seed money for an enterprise, financial training, and training on adolescence and gender-related issues such as sexual and reproductive health. 
• In Uganda, the Straight Talk Foundation (STF) works to "make schools a more welcoming environment for young people in order to reduce dropout rates." It uses Straight Talk 'dialogues' held in schools and helps teenagers form mixed-sex Straight Talk clubs in their schools to support the school clubs and other out-of-school clubs "by training peer trainers and arranging support visits by development workers or health workers. STF also uses popular media (newspapers and radio programmes) as well as outreach work and training." 
• In Vietnam, Plan runs two girls’ clubs through “Because I am a Girl" to provide safe spaces where girls discuss child marriage, sexual and reproductive health, and other problems they face.

These clubs can give girls time and space to meet and consider the challenges of what girls can and cannot do within their cultures. "Girls’ clubs and empowerment programmes can help to shift gender norms, attitudes and practices by increasing girls’ self-confidence, encouraging them to express their views, and giving them access to role models who often also act as mentors." Girls are allowed time away from chores and social isolation of family life to form social networks and access new knowledge about their rights, about safety, and about sexual and reproductive health, and, in some cases, about employment and finance. Child protection mechanisms are also available, for example, anti-FGM/C clubs in Ethiopia. Limitations include reaching too few girls, lacking resources, and issues of exclusion and self-exclusion - star and socially prominent students may be chosen to attend in-school clubs, leaving behind those deemed "less suited". 

Recommendations include:

• "Programmes need to do more to target the most vulnerable girls. Clubs must be held at convenient times for girls, and activities must be appropriate to participants’ age and context."
• "Clubs should engage with girls’ families to influence girls’ lives so that they can pursue their rights within a supportive environment. It can be particularly fruitful to engage with men (fathers, grandfathers, uncles and older brothers) who have the greatest decision-making power over girls’ lives."
• Ensure that club leaders/teachers are adequately trained.
• Provide detailed information and relevant vocational skills.
• Ensure that clubs and activities are age-appropriate. “Our fieldwork in Viet Nam found that while participatory games and competitions were good for engaging younger girls, older girls preferred dramas and discussion group activities....Similarly, the GREAT project in Uganda found that older adolescents preferred receiving messaging through radio dramas, while younger adolescents enjoyed materials such as flipbooks and board games...." 
• Exposure to role models, including the stories of peers, can help change gender norms, as can a supportive environment for girls among institutions and service providers, particularly of sexual and reproductive health services.
• "Girls’ clubs are most effective when accompanied by complementary interventions such as universal education, broader behaviour change and rights awareness communications that promote gender-egalitarian values, economic opportunities for educated women, and legal changes to prohibit discriminatory practices." 
• There is a need for planning for long-term financial sustainability of the clubs.