Authors: Meghan Mattern, Inclusive Quality Education Advisor; Artmore Muguse, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Coordinator; Alisha Parikh, Inclusive Quality Education Associate
Across the world, girls face disproportionate challenges due to entrenched gender inequality. Gender norms, stereotypes and discrimination lead to girls often experiencing multiple and varied barriers in accessing their rights, especially in education.
In many parts of Zimbabwe, the rate of girls graduating from secondary school is stubbornly low. The upper secondary completion rate for children in rural schools is 6% and the overall completion rate for girls in Zimbabwe is 14%. When Plan International first started exploring ways to work with girls and their communities to address barriers, we quickly learned through comparing interviews with girls to existing research that there are large discrepancies between what a standard desk review and local officials would say the reason is for these realities and what girls themselves say.
GirlEngage
Working with girls and positioning them as the drivers of change is the essence of Plan’s GirlEngage approach, a socioecological model that positions girls as partners and co-designers in all phases of a project — from planning to developing solutions that reflect their needs, priorities and aspirations. Through this approach, girls in Zimbabwe identified specific factors that impeded their graduation from secondary school. These included needing to walk long distances to school, lack of safe drinking water, protection risks, lack of confidence, child marriage and teenage pregnancy.
When asked how they would solve these challenges, girls identified and designed solutions such as building secure dormitories, improved access to potable water, confidence-building activities and building supportive families, schools and communities that respect gender equality. Thus, The Graduation Project was born.
Participatory action research
In order to further develop our understanding of what drives girls to leave school in the target districts and help us effectively address those factors, the project employed the use of youth-led participatory action research. YPAR involves researchers and program participants working alongside one another to design and execute the research process. This allows for methods and findings to reflect the important perspectives and priorities of those involved in the study.
A select group of girls went through a PAR training, which showed them how to design and implement the research to address identified challenges. Girls chose research topics based on their concerns about so many girls dropping out in the last few years of their education, and Plan staff showed them how they could use PAR to explore their research interests. The girls developed survey questions and conducted in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and key informant interviews with 33 girls who dropped out of school, 10 boys, nine parents and four other key informants.
Through the research, girls found that economic hardships and complex family situations, as well as gender-specific barriers such as the of lack of safety while walking long distances to and from school, stigmas and inadequate materials to manage their menstruation, gender bias, early marriage and teen pregnancy, are factors that led girls to drop out of school.
Based on these findings, the interviewed girls recommended greater economic empowerment; raising awareness about gender biases; increasing sex education and access to birth control; and creating a safe, enabling environment for girls to return to school.
These recommendations informed Plan’s work to address the barriers that prevent adolescent girls’ successful graduation from secondary school. A key aspect of these recommendations is that they reflect solutions involving actors at various levels. At the individual level, increasing access to birth control and economic opportunities gives girls greater control in decisions that affect their bodies and livelihoods. At the school level, improving sex education and creating an enabling environment for girls to return to school — particularly for pregnant and married girls — not only enriches the education of students in school, but also provides opportunities for those not in school to continue their education. At the family level, economic opportunities contribute toward preventing financial constraints as a barrier to girls’ education. Finally, at the community level, raising awareness about gender biases — particularly among men and boys — fosters a shift in mindsets, attitudes and behaviors.
Results
Girls are best placed to highlight existing challenges that prevent their access to inclusive, quality education, and thus, best placed to design the solutions to address these challenges. The cohort of girls in The Graduation Project, which utilized the GirlEngage approach, reported an increase in agency and life skills, based on the project baseline and endline.
The use of PAR created an opportunity for girls to discuss issues that affect them and develop solutions. Girls who are in school and living in the dorms shared their experiences of bush boarding. Those interviewed shared their experiences of local young men, or “Jonie-Jonies,” luring them into sexual relationships, resulting in unwanted pregnancies and early marriages. This lived reality of many girls prompted their recommendations to improve sex education and raise awareness about gender biases among community members, especially men and boys. Girls also identified secure dormitories as a solution to improve their safety and access to schooling.
The GirlEngage approach epitomizes girls’ meaningful and active participation, which often is lacking in traditional education projects, and is what differentiates it from other approaches. It is also an evolving approach, which allows girls to iteratively adjust their situations. PAR is an example of this evolution as girls deepened their understanding of the issues and refined solutions.
Moving forward
Through implementing The Graduation Project, and with the use of PAR, we learned that we must allocate significant time during the co-creation phase for girls to develop and design actionable solutions, and then be ready to change course to reflect those solutions. Based on findings from the endline, adaptive management and the ability to change a project implementation strategy on the basis of new information is important when managing projects such as The Graduation Project. While it was critical to focus on girls, it was important to include other stakeholders to achieve the girls’ vision and ensure sustainability.
It will be also be critical to conduct meetings with girls and community members to present the main findings from this project, and encourage feedback and suggestions. Using these results and feedback, future work will focus design activities tailored to reducing dropout rates and encouraging the return of out-of-school girls.
Using PAR with adolescent girls, which is now integrated into the GirlEngage approach, can help us design innovative ways to address barriers to girls’ education. In this way, we work with girls as partners and position them as the drivers of change to promote access to inclusive, quality education.
