Young People’s Experiences With an Empowerment-Based Behavior Change Intervention to Prevent Sexual Violence in Nairobi Informal Settlements: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

A 6-week behavioral, school-based intervention can contribute to empowering adolescent girls to recognize and resist sexual violence and to exercise agency.nThe intervention can also promote positive, nonviolent masculinities among adolescent boys and encourage rejection of harmful stereotypes.n Skilled, thoroughly trained local facilitators and interactive, adolescent-friendly relevant content were highlighted by the adolescent participants as key to intervention success.

Mechanisms for the prevention of adolescent intimate partner violence: a realist review of interventions in low- and middle-income countries

“…Nearly all of the interventions (n=9) used participatory group-based education, including games, discussions and role plays in peer groups, for social norm change at the individual level, broadly focusing on gender, violence, relationships and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) (32)(33)(34)(35)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39). These interventions will be referred to as gender transformative interventions throughout, i.e.…”

“…Nearly all the interventions showed some evidence of effectiveness in reducing the perpetration or experience of adolescent IPV, with eight presenting positive results (32,(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)44) (see Table 1). Two of the school-based interventions, PREPARE in South Africa and TrueLove in Mexico City, used participatory group education alongside school-wide campaigns such as teacher training and playground activities.…”

“…Comprehensive Sexuality (CSE) Education intervention in Mexico City, which again both used participatory group education sessions, found that the interventions reduced the risk of experiencing and perpetrating IPV for students who took part in the curriculums (32,35). The final school-based intervention, Skhokho in Pretoria, South Africa, which implemented a self-study curriculum, teacher training and family engagement intervention, had a positive but non-significant effect on IPV perpetration and victimisation, which authors attribute to the study being substantially under-powered because of a smaller than anticipated sample size (42).…”

“…These types of interventions, which have been described as 'transforming masculinities' (54), are emerging as a key focus of many violence prevention interventions with men, particularly in LMICs, and have shown promising results for social norm and attitude change around violence, fatherhood and SRH, and IPV reduction (55)(56)(57). This process of reconceptualising beliefs about gender, relationships and violence was not identified as a mechanism by authors across all gender transformative intervention evaluations, however, a large number of evaluations reported a reduced acceptance of gender inequitable attitudes or norms as an intermediary outcome (32,33,(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)42). Seven of these eight interventions also found significant reductions in the perpetration or experience of adolescent IPV, suggesting that changing norms around gender and violence might have been effective in reducing IPV.…”

“…Culturally and age-appropriate content also provided a mechanism that supported adolescents on the pathway to reconceptualization and social norm and behaviour change. Most of the included interventions delivered programmes with materials and content adapted to the specific context and participant age group, for example by ensuring characters and storylines were locally relevant and focused on issues affecting the age group they were targeting, and by using age-appropriate methods such as games and role plays to keep participants engaged and focused (32)(33)(34)(35)37,39,42). Two of the interventions used materials that were co-developed by intervention participants themselves (33,42).…”