Adolescence is critical to development, but young people need support to avoid risky behaviours and make decisions that set them on a positive life trajectory. Despite remarkable progress over the past two decades and increased recognition of ‘adolescent girls’ on the international development agenda, this transition remains particularly fraught for poor adolescent girls in low- and middle-income countries.
The Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) programme, an exciting new longitudinal research initiative working in the Global South, aims to strengthen the evidence base on adolescent girls – as children and as mothers of the next generation – to maximise their capabilities and shape their own futures.
Commsconsult is a member of a consortium which will produce a global body of evidence, based on longitudinal data gathered over eight years that is innovative, and goes beyond current frameworks for advancing the wellbeing of adolescent girls.
The GAGE evidence base will:
- Promote state-of-the-art knowledge about what works for adolescent girls (hereby also strengthening the capacities of practitioners and policy actors to become more discerning consumers of research evidence);
- Fast-track social change for adolescent girls by informing policy, programming design, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and advocacy (by e.g. producing audience-appropriate outputs);
- Improve the research tools and methodologies available to the global community.
The GAGE consortium is led by two key think tanks with a global reputation as pioneers in policy research on gender and childhood, the Overseas Development Institute and the International Center for Research on Women. Other members are leading academic institutions from Africa, Asia, MENA, the UK and the US, and the world’s premier INGOs and research institutions working on adolescence and gender.