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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Autors principals: Shahnaz, Rizwana, Karim, Raihana
Format: Working Paper
Idioma:en_US
Publicat: BRAC Research and Evaluation Division 2022
Matèries:
Accés en línia:http://hdl.handle.net/10361/16191
id 10361-16191
record_format dspace
spelling 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
institution Brac University
collection Institutional Repository
language en_US
topic Adolescents
Employment
Early marriage
Disadvantaged Girls
Skill development
spellingShingle 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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