Project Lead(s): Nava Ashraf
Issue
Adolescent girls in Zambia face social constraints that have psychological effects and make girls vulnerable to early pregnancy, HIV, domestic abuse and school dropout.
Teenage girls drop out of school at a rate three times higher than boys; the rate of HIV in young women is double the rate in young men and early childbearing is one of the biggest risk factors for death during delivery.
Solution
A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted in Zambia to assess whether teaching negotiation skills that empower girls – without severing social ties or engaging in transactional bargaining – result in more favourable allocations of resources to combat risky sex and HIV transmission.
The intervention isolated the impact of the curriculum by employing an innovative, three-arm design: a control group that met in a safe space, an Info-only group that received HIV/AIDS information, and an Info/negotiation group that was given both the HIV/AIDS information and a negotiation curriculum.
The curriculum used a relationship-driven negotiation technique and young Zambian women were trained as negotiation coaches, who trained additional coaches, thereby allowing long-term sustainability of the approach without outside intervention.
Outcome
Results showed that the training helped girls acquire and retain knowledge on negotiation skills and when to apply them.
The study also showed that the training resulted in a statistically significant improvement in the girls’ outcomes, as assessed in a game designed to simulate real-world behaviour.
A total of 3,146 girls were enrolled in the study.
When surveyed several months after the training, girls in the intervention group expressed a statistically significantly greater understanding of negotiation skills than those in the two control groups.
Preliminary results from this project helped the team secure additional funding, including $452,513 US from USAID-DIV, to collect more outcomes and administrative data (on test scores and school attendance), to allow the team to continue to move forward and scale the project.