Kecia Bertermann - Monitoring & Learning Director, Girl Hub - DFID Girl Summit 2014

"As you can imagine, conducting research with young girls is very challenging. They might be shy and reluctant to speak and to share their stories and their experiences." Kecia Bertermann 

Panel Discussion: Spotlight on Progress - "Prevention and Safeguarding: Protecting Those at Risk"

Context:  This presentation is from one of the 14 "Spotlights on Progress" video-recorded sessions from the Girl Summit 2014, London, United Kingdom (UK). The sessions were organised to share best practice between practitioners, grassroots activists, and government ministers across the issues of female genital mutilation (FGM) (also FGM/C - female genital mutilation/cutting) and child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM). Girl Summit is a project of the Department for International Development (DFID), UK.

Profile of speaker: A featured panelist of this Spotlight session was Kecia Bertermann, whose presentation was entitled "Collecting data on empowerment and change in attitudes: innovations and ethics". Ms. Bertermann is Senior Monitoring Learning and Results Manager with Girl Hub Rwanda. "Girl Hub [see related summaries below] is a strategic collaboration between DFID and Nike Foundation to transform the lives of girls. It aims to build evidence, catalyse partnerships and use branded media platforms to reposition girls in society and unleash the girl effect - the power of investing in adolescent girls to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty."  Bertermann spoke on approaches to integrate girls’ voices in research on attitudes and behaviour in a National Attitude Survey in Rwanda and on research in Ethiopia. She also discussed the development of a digital platform for monitoring the Rwandan Ministry of Health’s 12+ programmes. This is a mentorship and safe space initiative designed to reach 12,000 girls and 960 mentors in its first year. It includes efforts to build the qualitative participatory research capacity of young women through the Girl Research Unit: "young women have been going into communities and spending time gaining the trust of girls, boys, parents, gatekeepers and local leaders. Using this method, they've collected information about girls, including the most difficult to track."

Strategy overview: The aim of Bertermann's work is integrating girls’ voices in research on attitudes and behaviours. "Bertermann outlined their use of the large-scale SenseMaker [see related summaries below]", a quantitative hybrid instrument to gather insights into "attitudes by/about adolescent girls." This is a story collection methodology. "[W]e go into the community and we ask girls to share a story, any story." Then, they ask the girl to tell them what the story is about. Girls convey the meaning of their stories through completing a series of analytical questions called the "signification framework", such as a triangle that has three elements, one at each point, e.g., "Independent", "Vulnerable", "Obedient". Marks show where the girl places the theme of her story. This method is used with additional quantitative survey information.

Bertermann talked about how to collect information in Rwanda at large-scale. She described how Girl Hub is using new technologies to gather data at scale for the 12+ mentorship and safe space initiative with the Rwandan Ministry of Health, a programme that is reaching 12,000 girls, with plans to reach 100,000 girls in three years through a mobile app for smartphones that the mentors will use to collect routine data. She also showed a video of the Girl Research Unit (GRU) in Rwanda, an initiative that is building the capacity of young women researchers through accredited participatory research training in qualitative research techniques, how to write discussion guides, how to write a research proposal, how to approach and recruit girls for research purposes, etc. The GRUs have reached 866 girls for 6 projects between April 2013 and 2014.

Overview of this Summit session: From the Girl Summit summary document: "This spotlight will share experience and discuss ways forward on measuring progress in addressing FGM and child, early and forced marriage - including measurement of changes in behaviour and the social norms which uphold these practises. Discussion will include the areas that need to be investigated; how they can be measured innovatively and ethically; and how this evidence can be effectively linked to national and international policy processes."

The session was opened by a presentation of a "Commitment Announcement: Alexander Woolcombe from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced their commitment to join the global effort to strengthen the evidence base on FGM and CEFM. This includes: (i) working with Tostan to support their monitoring, evaluation and learning programme to understand how and why they are having impact; (ii) co-funding with CIFF to support ICRW and the Work Bank on research on the economic consequences of CEFM; and (iii) work in Ethiopia to improve nutrition and reproductive health by tackling structural determinants.

The speakers, in order of appearance, are:
Dr. Anju Malhotra, Principal Advisor on Gender and Rights, UNICEF - Assessing and measuring progress in child marriage reduction.

Dr. Francesca Moneti, Senior Child Protection Specialist, UNICEF - Measuring social norm change.

Dr. Caroline Harper, Head of Programme, Social Development, Overseas Development Institute (ODI) - Measuring empowerment and social transformation in the post-2015 agenda (OECD and ODI).

Kecia Bertermann, Monitoring & Learning Director, Girl Hub - Collecting data on empowerment and change in attitudes: innovations and ethics.

Professor Hazel Barrett, Coventry University/ Researching Female Genital Mutilation Intervention Programmes Linked to African Communities in the EU (REPLACE) - Approach to measuring community based behaviour change; Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and UK.

The session is moderated by Nick Dyer, Director General for Policy and Global Programmes at the Department for International Development."

Footage of this (available below) and other "Spotlights" are available on DFID’s YouTube channel.

The Girl Summit is a project of DFID. Click here and scroll down to see the full list of individuals and organisations committed to working on girls' issues, as well as a list of Girl Summit Charter signatories.