Combining Mentoring Programs with Cash Transfers for Adolescent Girls in Liberia : Baseline Report
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 ris...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/08/26698834/combining-mentoring-programs-cash-transfers-adolescent-girls-liberia-baseline-report http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25042 |
| Summary: | 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 non-consensual. 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. |
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