Combining Mentoring Programs with Cash Transfers for Adolescent Girls in Liberia: Baseline Report

Abstract

This report presents findings from the baseline assessment of International Rescue Committee's (IRC) Girl Empower (GE) program in Nimba County, Liberia. GE seeks to help 13 to 14 year-old girls make healthy life choices and decrease their risk of sexual abuse. The program centers on weekly meetings between girls and trained local mentors, during which the girls learn about life skills and financial literacy. GE also holds monthly discussion groups for participants' caregivers, and trains local health and psychosocial care providers on how to improve and expand services for survivors of gender-based violence. This baseline report is part of a cluster-randomized controlled trial, which aims to assess the program's impact 24 months after baseline.21 percent of the baseline sample of 13-14 year-old females reported having previously had sex. Within this group, 29 percent indicated that their first sexual act was nonconsensual. Among all GE girls, 37 percent reported having experienced sexual violence of some type, such as being physically forced to have sex, non-physically pressured (coerced/ persuaded) to have sex, someone unsuccessfully attempting to have sex with them, and being touched in a sexual way.The levels of nonconsensual first sex and any experience of nonconsensual sex are at the high end of the range reported by the UNICEF Violence against Children Surveys (VACS) in Swaziland, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe. As the VACS reporting is for (a variety of ) age ranges, each of which is higher than that in this study, the levels of sexual violence reported here are very high in comparison.

Advancing and translating knowledge: a systematic inquiry into the 2010–2020 mental health and psychosocial support intervention research evidence base

“…The majority of studies looking at participant experiences and perspectives (including process evaluations) (Barron and Abdullah, 2012;Walstrom et al, 2012;Richters et al, 2013;Eyber et al, 2014;Hogwood et al, 2014;Lilley et al, 2014;McBain et al, 2015;Schafer et al, 2015;Aldersey et al, 2016;Eiling et al, 2016;El-Khani et al, 2016;Hechanova et al, 2016;Hugelius et al, 2016;Asghar et al, 2018;Tol et al, 2018b;Greene et al, 2019;King, 2019;Koegler et al, 2019;Ordóñez-Carabaño et al, 2019;Sullivan et al, 2019) Rahman et al, 2016;Hallman et al, 2018;Khan et al, 2017;Tol et al, 2018b;Sijbrandij et al, 2020;Tol et al, 2020aTol et al, , 2020b, there was a predominance towards a low risk of bias for each of the domains scored, except for allocation concealment, blinding of participants and personnel, and allocation concealment, which were more 'unclear'. There was a much higher risk of bias and a greater lack of clarity amongst the 12 controlled before-and-after studies (Ager et al, 2011;Sonderegger et al, 2011;Morris et al, 2012;Jordans et al, 2013;Mpande et al, 2013;Mercy Corps, 2015;Uyun and Witruk, 2017;Akiyama et al, 2018;Veronese and Barola, 2018;Metzler et al, 2019aMetzler et al, , 2019b…”

“…There was a geographic emphasis in the literature towards East, West and Central Africa, where two-thirds of the studies reported were located (Ager et al, 2010(Ager et al, , 2011McKay et al, 2011;Sonderegger et al, 2011;Morris et al, 2012;Walstrom et al, 2012;Jordans et al, 2013;O'Callaghan et al, 2013O'Callaghan et al, , 2015Richters et al, 2013;Betancourt et al, 2014;Eyber et al, 2014;Lykes and Crosby, 2014;Hogwood et al, 2014;Aber et al, 2015;Blattman et al, 2015;McBain et al, 2015;Puffer et al, 2015;Aldersey et al, 2016;Eiling et al, 2016;Hallman et al, 2018;Tol et al, 2018aTol et al, , 2018bGreene et al, 2019;King, 2019;Ordóñez-Carabaño et al, 2019;Koegler et al, 2019;Metzler et al, 2019aMetzler et al, , 2019bSijbrandij et al, 2020;Tol et al, 2020aTol et al, , 2020b. Despite considerable humanitarian work occurring in the Middle East and in Asia (the latter generally characterised by natural disasters), these settings had relatively limited representation in the literature.…”

“…The most commonly researched interventions were at the group level (Ager et al, 2010(Ager et al, , 2011Jordans et al, 2010;McKay et al, 2011;Sonderegger et al, 2011;Barron and Abdullah, 2012;Morris et al, 2012;Walstrom et al, 2012;Jordans et al, 2013;Mpande et al, 2013;O'Callaghan et al, 2013O'Callaghan et al, , 2014O'Callaghan et al, , 2015Richters et al, 2013;Betancourt et al, 2014;Eyber et al, 2014;Hogwood et al, 2014;Lykes and Crosby, 2014;Lilley et al, 2014;Aber et al, 2015;Blattman et al, 2015;McBain et al, 2015;Puffer et al, 2015;Schafer et al, 2015;Mercy Corps, 2015;Aldersey et al, 2016;Eiling et al, 2016;Hechanova et al, 2016;Uyun and Witruk, 2017;Akiyama et al, 2018;Hallman et al, 2018;Asghar et al, 2018;Tol et al, 2018aTol et al, , 2018bGreene et al, 2019;King, 2019;Ordóñez-Carabaño et al, 2019;Koegler et al, 2019;Metzler et al, 2019aMetzler et al, , 2019b…”

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

“…The baseline characteristics of the study sample have been described elsewhere (Hallman et al, 2016), so we provide only a brief description here. The average age in the control group was 13.7 at baseline.…”

“…Less than 2% of the study participants had ever been pregnant or married/cohabitated with a partner. These characteristics were balanced between the control group and the two treatment arms (Hallman et al, 2016).…”