Life Skills for Adolescent Girls in the COVID-19 Pandemic

"The promotion and acquisition of life skills is an important element in preparing highly marginalised adolescent girls for their transition into adulthood. This is particularly important in contexts where access to appropriate information, guidance, role models and services is limited."
From the Girls' Education Challenge (GEC), GAGE (Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence), and the Brookings Institution, this briefing offers guidance on how to align the design, delivery, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of essential life skills programming for girls. It: provides a life skills framework for implementers to use in adapting their programming under the unique conditions created by COVID-19, features short case studies of life skills interventions from around the world, and offers links to related guidance/tools created by GEC.
As outlined here, previous crises show us that life skills, delivered alongside other interventions that support social networks, relationship building, and economic opportunities, can confer benefits during emergencies, such as by protecting girls from physical violence, early marriage, and early pregnancy. However, there is a need for more focused programming for adolescent girls in crises, as well as efforts to build the evidence base around what works. To that end, GEC, GAGE, and Brookings have jointly developed this life skills framework to provide a common approach to design and measurement across a range of different marginalised girls' life skills projects:Findings from GAGE's qualitative research suggest that girls around the world are facing new and heightened risks and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. With school closures and lockdowns continuing, GAGE suggests that it is critical to find creative and innovative ways to continue supporting adolescent girls' with life skills programming. Evidence indicates that, when consulted, girls in previous emergencies and crises expressed an interest in developing their life skills. For example, GAGE's virtual research with adolescent girls in low and middle-income country (LMIC) contexts in April and May 2020 highlighted that girls want context-relevant information on prevention of virus spread and on services to support them through the crisis (for example, how to effectively access and utilise online education and psychosocial support).
Some of the tips offered in the briefing for providing the life skills programming girls say they need and want during COVID-19 include:

• Tailor content to the specific age, context, and subgroup of the adolescent girls benefiting from the programme.
• Explore innovative means to keep girls and their club facilitators and mentors connected; the importance of relationships during a crisis cannot be underestimated.
• Create safe spaces that provide protective environments through the development of peer networks and the delivery of essential life skills content.
• Be aware of - and seek to address - the significant digital gender divides that risk reinforcing existing inequalities in LMIC contexts when life skills offerings are grounded in information and communication technologies (ICTs).
• Attend to the fact that, if relevant resources and services (e.g., adolescent-friendly health services, distance learning technology, public health information, information about social and economic assistance) are unavailable, a girl's ability to translate her acquired life skills into empowered action becomes limited.
• Leverage existing community networks' local knowledge and proximity to beneficiary homes to distribute messages and materials.
• Take this opportunity to build on and ramp up community-wide positive gender norms messaging, in light of the importance of communicating with parents and other gatekeepers to gain their support in sharing domestic burdens and responsibilities more equitably, and to demonstrate the benefits that girls' access to certain media outputs, content, and resources can bring to the whole family.
• Develop public service announcements (PSAs) and awareness campaigns to promote positive messages about girls' and women's roles in crises and serve as reminders of their capabilities, contributions, and agency.

Going forward, the GEC will be using evaluations, research, and project monitoring to track the short- and long-term impact of some of the life skills initiatives detailed in the briefing on the lives of adolescent girls.