Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP): Mid-term findings—Brief

Abstract

The Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP) is a four-year effort to support more than 11,000 of the most vulnerable adolescent girls in Zambia. AGEP was led by the Population Council, in partnership with the Young Women's Christian Association of Zambia, the National Savings and Credit Bank of Zambia, and the Government of Zambia. The program design was based on the asset-building framework which posits that if girls are able to build social, health, and economic assets in the short term, there will be longer-term dividends on health and education outcomes. This brief reports on midterm findings of the study which raise many questions about the interplay between established social norms and interventions that are new to these girls and their communities. They suggest that the direct-to-girls platform, while a necessary component of reaching vulnerable girls, is not sufficient in the Zambian context to overcome the range of individual, household, and community-level factors preventing a safe, healthy, and productive transition into adulthood.