Highlights of Initiatives Addressing Child Marriage in Bangladesh Part I
Masuma Billah, Population Council
The project titled ‘Accelerating Action to End Child Marriage in Bangladesh’ with the objective of reducing school dropout of girls has the approach of letting girls decide who they want to choose to help them against getting married at an early age. They also have aims to search for alternative ways to reduce child marriage.
The Accelerating Action to End Child Marriage project is designed to identify ways to scale up skill-building activities along with alternative community participation strategies to ensure long-term sustainability of the program. The project follows randomised controlled trial study involving more than 13,000 girls aged 10-19 in 72 communities within two districts (Bogra and Jamalpur) of Bangladesh where child marriage prevalence is very high. The aim of the project is to develop and evaluate a skill-building program that is girl-centered, cost-effective, sustainable, and community owned, as well as to identify pathways to scale. The research design is built upon the evidence-based BALIKA skill-building interventions. Communities will be assigned to one of three different intervention arms in order to test the potential value-add of different community engagement approaches, as complementary to the skill-building program.
Female Gender Promoters (GP) will be recruited from the community by Ministry of Women and Children Affairs (MOWCA), the implementing partner of the project, to provide the girls with basic life skills, gender and livelihoods training. GP(s) will be provided with TOT for 12 days, prior to their session conduction with girls. Training sessions will be conducted in 72 unions of 2 districts: Bogura and Jamalpur. The project will create safe-spaces for girls which will be known as “Kishori Resource Center” in designated primary schools where training sessions will be conducted. The centers will be equipped with Information Communication Technology with access to laptops and internet. Training sessions will allow the girls to enhance their life skills and livelihood capabilities. The GP(s) will also engage with communities with a focus on changing gender norms and practices through different community engagement activities.
Monitoring of the project will be carried out through mobile based applications. Mobile apps will be used to monitor attendance of girls and other activities such as scheduling community meetings and monitor community engagement activities.
