Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres
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 an...
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10361-161912022-02-08T21:02:10Z Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres Shahnaz, Rizwana Karim, Raihana Adolescents Employment Early marriage Disadvantaged Girls Skill development 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. 2022-02-08T06:36:40Z 2022-02-08T06:36:40Z 2008-07 Working Paper http://hdl.handle.net/10361/16191 en_US application/pdf BRAC Research and Evaluation Division |
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Brac University |
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en_US |
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Adolescents Employment Early marriage Disadvantaged Girls Skill development |
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Adolescents Employment Early marriage Disadvantaged Girls Skill development Shahnaz, Rizwana Karim, Raihana Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres |
description |
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. |
format |
Working Paper |
author |
Shahnaz, Rizwana Karim, Raihana |
author_facet |
Shahnaz, Rizwana Karim, Raihana |
author_sort |
Shahnaz, Rizwana |
title |
Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres |
title_short |
Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres |
title_full |
Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres |
title_fullStr |
Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres |
title_full_unstemmed |
Providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: An evaluation of BRAC’s ELA centres |
title_sort |
providing microfinance and social space to empower adolescent girls: an evaluation of brac’s ela centres |
publisher |
BRAC Research and Evaluation Division |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10361/16191 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT shahnazrizwana providingmicrofinanceandsocialspacetoempoweradolescentgirlsanevaluationofbracselacentres AT karimraihana providingmicrofinanceandsocialspacetoempoweradolescentgirlsanevaluationofbracselacentres |
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