Girls Education Fund Impact: Responding to Girls Voices on the Front-lines of the COVID-19 Pandemic
AMPLIFY Girls began with a need; to improve outcomes for adolescent girls in East Africa and amplify the voices, work, and collective impact of community-driven organizations (CDOs) on the ground working to support girls in their communities. To achieve our vision, together with our partners, we leverage our collective power through collaboration, research, and advocacy.
In 2020 when COVID-19 hit, we witnessed the incredible work that our partner CDOs were doing in East Africa; with their hands deep on the ground in the middle of crisis-affected areas, they were the frontline responders. Despite this, from the reports we heard about the crisis response, it was clear to us that girl’s voices and community-driven organizations’, we're being left out of the COVID-19 impact conversation.
From October 2020, we collaborated with our partners to find out how COVID-19 had affected communities and girls all over East Africa and more importantly, to share their voices and concerns. The results from our research were devastating yet important. As highlighted in our COVID-19 barriers report, it was clear that girls and young women were greatly affected.
With the many effects of COVID-19 on girls and their communities, what concerned us the most was the high rate of teenage pregnancy among adolescent girls, which was the primary driver of girls’ school dropout during the pandemic. From our study, we found that transactional sex was the primary cause of unintended pregnancies amongst girls, and the overwhelming majority of pregnant girls in the study reported becoming pregnant after engaging in transactional sex for basic needs like food, clothing, and menstrual hygiene products. However, not all hope was lost.
Our partner community-driven organizations were at the front lines of the situation, innovating and implementing programs based on what they felt was needed most in their communities. By holding community dialogues on girls’ reproductive health rights, mentorship programs, scholarship programs, giving access to remote learning opportunities, and giving pregnant girls and young mothers pathways to continue their education; our partners were developing innovative ways to stem the pandemic-related issues in girls’ education. To document these interventions, we put together a second report highlighting ‘Promising Practices from the AMPLIFY Collective.’
Both our reports generated from our research; ‘Understanding the Barriers to Girls’ School Return’ and our ‘Promising Practices report’, highlighted girls' voices from the frontlines of the pandemic, and we heard them loud and clear; girls wanted to be supported to return to school!
Community-driven organizations are closest to the community and can therefore easily respond to the needs of the community during crises. Too often, research is done to evaluate a program or problem and the report is read by all but we fail to fund interventions and move forward. At AMPLIFY Girls, we are different. We recognize the deep need to leverage resources to support organizations on the ground supporting critical needs.
To support our partners and meet the needs of the girls, we advocated for funding to be directed to our partner community-driven organizations to further strengthen their capacity to meet girls’ needs so they can access their education without interruption. The result of our efforts was the AMPLIFY Girls Education and Innovation Fund; an initiative to support our partner organizations to invest in girls’ return to school.
Through the fund, we've been able to disburse over $290K to our network of partners! Our CDO partners have so far supported over 700 girls, including pregnant girls and young mothers to return to vocational education and traditional education. From our partners’ impact on the ground, we’ve seen them do such incredible work in reaching out to vulnerable girls who would otherwise have fallen through the cracks. We hope to continue to support their efforts through the Education and Innovation Fund and are calling for funders and donors to support us to continue this work with our partners.
Watch out for updates on girls' stories of impact from our Education and Innovation Fund.