| Sumario: | Lately there has been a surge in the variety of approaches to assist the
adolescents, specially the girls, in building up their lives and livelihoods. With
financial assistance from Nike Foundation, BRAC started combining financial
and social interventions in 2005 by setting up ELA (Employment and Livelihood
for Adolescents) Centres for the ELA microfinance group members. This study is
intended to assess the usefulness of this combined approach. It is based on a
panel dataset of ELA Centre participants and non-participants, which tried to
capture changes using qualitative tools. Despite a number of methodological
drawbacks, we found indication of the programme being useful in reducing the
chances of early marriage, engaging the participants in economic activities,
increasing their mobility and involvement in extracurricular reading. Qualitative
exploration indicated much stronger effects than our survey estimates, which may
have happened because of the participants’ over-attribution of their status on their
participation, which is biased by self-selection. On the other hand, there are some
indications that the surveys failed to capture some changes due to methodological
limitations. Nonetheless, it appears that girls at disadvantaged position in terms
of education and parents’ openness to girl’s empowerment are less likely to
participate in the programme. It points the need for targeting such girls.
Moreover, the skill development training should include a generic module on
financial literacy focusing on budgeting, financial management, insurance
schemes etc. There is still scope of improvement in general awareness on health
issues. The materials that are provided to the centre should include more health
specific knowledge based issues.
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