Youth

August 12, 2014

The safe space intervention

Around 20 girls sit in a small room, decorated with messages about leadership, reproductive health and family planning along with pictures they have drawn themselves. This is a BRAC Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) club. This particular club called Bwebajja is located in a semi-urban area, under BRAC’s Kajjansi branch in Uganda. Huddled together, the girls look up at us, muzungus (foreigners) with awe and anticipation. They know who we are. They know BRAC. They call it “Blaca.”
August 6, 2014

BRAC is empowering girls against child forced marriage through sport

Mitu and Tania are club leaders and cricket coaches from BRAC’s adolescent development programme (ADP) in Bangladesh. The programme creates safe places where adolescent girls can read, socialise, play sport together, take part in cultural activities and have open discussions on personal and social issues with their peers. Each club has 25-35 adolescent members aged 10 to 19 years old. A range of livelihood training courses are offered to the older girls to help them learn new skills for employment.
March 21, 2013

Youth building a world of savers, peer-by-peer

"The global financial crisis has turned us into a world of savers," The Washington Post reported recently. "Including the poorest among us." Of course people all throughout history, in every culture, have found ways to store away money for a rainy day. The difference today is the growing access to more organized, safer ways to save money. Access is not the same as adoption, however. For the poor to adopt new savings tools, requires, as the story notes, "building the trust of the poor, penny by penny," which can be very slow. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that
March 15, 2013

It takes a woman to raise a village

This blog post is an abridged version of a case study featured in Problem or Promise: Harnessing Youth Potential in Uganda, recently published by BRAC and The MasterCard Foundation.
March 13, 2013

Ropes and harnesses for Uganda’s toughest climbers

I remember well the worn-out look in the boy’s eyes when he approached and asked, in a hushed yet clear tone, “Sir, I really need a job. Can you please help me? Your company?”
March 7, 2013

Girls take on a leading role in South Sudan

Ajah is nineteen, and attends Bor Secondary School in South Sudan’s remote Jonglei state. In a country with a literacy rate of just sixteen percent for women fifteen years of age and above, Ajah is an exception to the rule. And she is leading the charge to change the rules.
January 30, 2013

Video girls for change

I wrote recently about the impressive return on investment calculated by one World Bank economist based on the per-girl cost of BRAC’s girls’ empowerment clubs, Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents. Numbers are one thing, but what really hits home are the results in terms of people’s lives – people like Olivia Kyomuhendo, age 22.
June 14, 2012

Uganda’s girl effect goes to Turkey

Olivia Kyomuhendo, 22, walked into Entebbe airport and wanted to pinch herself. “Am I dreaming?” she asked herself.  Olivia was at the main airport in Uganda with three girls from her videography program, waiting to fly to Turkey. For Olivia and her three friends, this was their first time out of the country and anticipation was great. When the voice on the loud speaker announced that their flight had arrived, Olivia jumped up with excitement. It was finally going to happen. She was going to travel outside of Uganda.