The Adolescent Girls Initiative - Kenya (AGI-K) Learning Series

Publication Date

October 3, 2017

"A safe space is a place where anyone can relax and be able to fully express themselves, without feeling uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, cultural background, religious affiliation, age, physical or mental ability."

This brief highlights best practice and lessons learnt from the implementation of safe spaces for adolescent girls as part of the Adolescent Girls Initiative - Kenya (AGI-K). It is hoped that the sharing of these experiences will inform the future design and management of adolescent girls' programmes in hard-to-reach or marginalised communities.

As explained in the brief, adolescent girls in Kenya face a number of risks and vulnerabilities that can affect their health, education status, and general well-being. The AGI-K addresses these risks by delivering multi-sectoral interventions, targeting violence prevention, education, health, and wealth creation, to adolescent girls aged 11-15 in two marginalised areas of Kenya: 1) the urban slums of Kibera in Nairobi, and 2) Wajir County in northeastern Kenya. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) design is being used to compare the impact of four different intervention packages, along with their associated costs, to assess if and how intervening in early adolescence will impact girls' lives as they transition into early adulthood. Save the Children in partnership with Population Council is implementing the project in 79 villages in Wajir County.

Within the context of the AGI-K programme, a safe space refers to "an adolescent girls' group that meets over an extended period of time to learn under the mentorship of a trained female community member on a range of topics - including health, life skills and financial education. The girls are ideally in a group of between 20 and 30 and categorised by age sets, i.e. 11-12 years and 13-14 years where the total number of girls in the programme exceeds 30 in a village and 11-14 years where there are less than 30 girls in a village. Groups can also be segmented by life-cycle status (i.e. in school/out of school or married/unmarried)."

The adolescent girls in the safe spaces are taken through a series of topics in the health curriculum including sexual and reproductive health, hygiene and sanitation, self-esteem, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation (FGM), and early marriage. The financial education curriculum equips the girls with knowledge on financial management including differentiating between needs and wants, setting financial goals, budgeting, and saving and identifying investment opportunities, among other topics. Girls are supported with KES 300 annually for the two years of the implementation phase of the project to enable them to practice the financial education skills learnt through safe spaces.

The brief outlines some general observations around the impact of the programme, such as the improvement of self-esteem amongst the girls, the stimulation of income generation activities, the creation of a supportive social network for girls outside of the safe spaces, and the improvement of mentors' health and financial knowledge, alongside the girls.

Some of the challenges highlighted in the brief include:

• Mentors not resident in communities they serve - The safe spaces mentors were often not permanent residents of the villages they were supporting, as the majority of the men and women from the communities who had acquired basic education tend to move out of the villages to urban centres. This made it difficult for them to conduct follow-up visits to girls who were not attending the safe spaces.
• Reaching out-of-school girls - Adolescent girls not enrolled in schools seldom attended safe spaces; they appeared uncomfortable with the safe spaces being held in a school setting, as they felt that perhaps the safe spaces were meant for only girls attending schools.
• Attrition of mentors - There was a high number of mentors exiting from the programme in pursuit of their education and other personal ventures.
• Distance between villages - The long distances between the villages made it difficult to conduct the weekly supervisions required in all the safe spaces in the 40 villages. This affected the submission of safe spaces data and consequently delayed remedial actions where they were needed.

The following are some of the learning points and recommendations highlighted in the brief:

• To ensure sustainability of gains made through the safe spaces, engaging the adolescent boys more directly would help them understand the importance of supporting their daughters to lead better lives in the future by changing their harmful beliefs and practices, such as early and forced marriages and FGM.
• Refresher trainings coupled with on-the-job trainings by project staff, and support with audio aids (i.e., radios and safe spaces sessions recorded in Somali language) appeared to improve the mentors' knowledge on the health and financial literacy topics, as well as their ability to facilitate the safe spaces sessions.
• In contexts where adolescent girls not enrolled in schools are uncomfortable having the safe spaces sessions held in schools, it would be best to consider either having separate safe spaces sessions for these girls, or where other venues exist, have the safe spaces conducted outside school settings.
• While designing the safe spaces curriculum, it is crucial to involve the local stakeholders and pilot-test it to make sure it is simple enough to be used by the mentors. The use of audio or visual aids to guide facilitation of safe spaces sessions should always be adopted to ensure optimal learning by the girls.
• To ensure dedication in facilitation of safe spaces and reduce attrition of mentors, it is best to engage permanent residents of the project sites as safe spaces mentors regardless of their level of education, but it is necessary to engage them more in trainings, to provide regular support supervision, and to use simplified training materials including audio or visual aids customised to the local language.