WUNRN
CHOICES
Curriculum Developed by Save the Children- Created specifically for boys and
girls aged 10 - 14 years old, the CHOICES curriculum engaged adolescents in
fun, developmentally appropriate dialogues about their notions of
respect, communication, fairness and their dreams for the future. The
goal of the curriculum is to empower youth and adolescents, through systematic
thought reasoning and behavior change, to challenge the accepted social gender
norms in their community.
TRANSFORMING GENDER NORMS OF VERY YOUNG ADOLESCENTS: INNOVATIVE INTERVENTION & EVALUATION IN NEPAL
Direct Link to Full 4-Page 2014 Document including Charts:
"The child is father to the man." This proverb tells us that what we learn and do as children greatly influences our adult lives. This includes the cultural and gender norms we internalize and the behaviors we observe and adopt. Research on adolescent development validates this traditional wisdom, finding that the pre-teen and early teen years are especially important for the formation of norms and the adoption of behaviors that persist into adulthood. These early behaviors and norms significantly affect adults' educational attainment, occupations and health, including reproductive health.
Can gender bias be
changed? More specifically, can participation in eight 2-hour sessions over a
3-month period lead to a shift in gender norms among Very Young Adolescents
(VYAs), girls and boys at the critical ages of 10 to 14 years old? It was this
question that Save the Children and Georgetown University's Institute for
Reproductive Health (IRH) addressed through CHOICES, a curriculum-based pilot
program of creative, participatory activities and innovative evaluation
techniques. Implemented over a three-month period in Nepal, CHOICES achieved
its aims. The evaluation of the program demonstrated that even relatively brief
interventions can empower VYAs - Very Young Adolescents - to challenge the
gender norms of their society and make changes in their own lives in the
direction of gender equity.
Intervention
Save the Children is
a trusted presence in Nepal, having long worked in its poor districts; among
other services, it sponsors clubs for disadvantaged children. Save the Children
decided to pilot its CHOICES curriculum at child clubs in Siraha district in
the Terai region, which has a high prevalence of practices that perpetuate
gender inequity such as early marriage, early childbearing and dowry. Formative
research showed persistent gaps between boys and girls in the division of
household chores, access to education, freedom to play and overall autonomy.
CHOICES participatory activities were therefore designed to enable VYAs to
recognize and reflect on these gender inequities, explore their feelings about
gender bias, practice gender-equitable behavior and engage in discussions about
gender norms in all-boy, all-girl and mixed groups. The trained facilitators
were child club graduates ages 18-24.
Evaluation
IRH has proven
experience developing and using innovative qualitative evaluation techniques
with VYAs to assess both gender and fertility awareness. For this reason Save
the Children asked IRH to monitor and evaluate the CHOICES program. IRH worked
closely with Save the Children to clarify the objectives of the curriculum,
identify measurable indicators of gender equity and develop the evaluation
research design, methods and tools. IRH also worked with Save the Children to
develop monitoring tools to determine how the curriculum was implemented in
each site. A total of 603 youth—almost equally divided between girls and
boys—participated in the evaluation, about 300 from 12 child clubs in the
experimental area and 300 from 12 child clubs in the control area.
Conclusion
The results of this
evaluation show that the CHOICES curriculum was effective in creating a shift
towards more gender-equitable norms among young girls and boys. Building on the
success of the CHOICES curriculum, Save the Children is now developing
complementary approaches for engaging parents, teachers and community leaders.
While fostering more gender-equitable attitudes and behaviors among Very Young
Adolescents, is a critical component of promoting more equitable gender
norms, sustained behavior change will not occur without engaging parents and
the community to create a supportive environment for gender-equitable norms.