Liberia economic empowerment of adolescent girls and young women project
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RISKS AFECTING GIRLS’ AND YOUNG WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN TRAINING AND THEIR TRANSITION FROM TRAINING TO WORK This section analyses the problems that girls and young women face in Greater Monrovia to participate and complete the training, and to find a job or start a business after the training. The section is based on discussions held during the focus groups with girls and young women during which they were asked to identify and rank the factors influencing their participation in training and the transition from training towards starting a business or finding a job. This information is complemented with data from the Girls’ Vulnerability Survey, which included questions addressing the same issues. 4.1. Factors influencing girls’ and young women’s participation and performance in training According to the results of focus groups discussions, the single most important issue mentioned as a factor threatening girls’ ability to participate and perform in training was the conflict between spending time in training and spending time earning to support themselves and their families. This was especially important among the older girls (out-of-schools and Accelerated Learning Program students), but came up first in the ranking of the younger girls as well. This was closely followed by the issue of pregnancy, although it was considered more a reason for drop out than for not attending the training in the first place. Surprisingly, the need to take care of their own children did not come as an impediment to participate in training, the girls claiming that they could always find someone with whom to leave their children. Sexual harassment from teachers was also mentioned in all the discussions as an important problem. All groups mentioned that it is common for teachers to request sex for grades, and to sexually abuse girls. In addition, other important factors mentioned were parent’s restriction and training difficulty. Other factors mentioned during the focus groups discussions, but not ranked among the most important, are:
According to the Girls Vulnerability Survey, lack of material support (from others) and the need to work to support their families are the main reasons not to attend/complete training (with 72 percent and 34 percent of answers, respectively). This was followed by parent’s restriction (31 percent) and pregnancy (29 percent). Lack of motivation, lack of seriousness, or laziness was another important reason for 25 percent of the girls and young women in the survey. About 20 percent of survey respondents identified training difficulty as an impediment to complete the training. Approximately 10 percent of respondents thought that the need to take care of their children was an important barrier for girls to attend and/or complete the training. Finally, sexual harassment from teachers came last in the survey with only 6 percent of answers9. However, when asked about important attributes of training programs, ‘a good mannered instructor’ and ‘a safe environment’ came second and third with 77 percent and 74 percent of girls and young women considering them very important10. The results of the focus groups and the Girls’ Vulnerability Survey show that the most important threat to girls’ and young women’s ability to participate and perform in training is the conflict between spending time in training and spending time earning to support themselves and their families. Pregnancy is the second most important factor limiting girls’ ability to complete the training. Parent’s restrictions and the difficulty of the training seem to also play important roles in girls’ and young women’s view. With regard to sexual harassment from teachers, the results are not conclusive however. While very important for focus groups discussants, this factor has low weight among survey respondents. However, this may obey to the sensitivity of the question, and the fact that in a short survey such as this, enumerators do not have enough time to build a rapport which allows girls’ to express themselves freely about this type of issue. Information from questions not directly asking about sexual harassment points however to the importance of ‘a safe environment’ and of a ‘good mannered instructor’, indicating perhaps a higher importance of sexual harassment problems than openly declared by survey respondents. Similarly, lack of motivation, laziness and lack of seriousness was mentioned in the survey but not in focus groups discussions.
4.2 Factors influencing girls’ and young women’s transition from training to work Barriers to obtaining a job Lack of skills was the main reason that survey respondents (71 percent of answers), and focus groups participants identified for not getting a job. Lack of contacts figured prominently in the discussion of problems for girls and young women to get a job during focus groups, and was also the second most important factor mentioned in the survey (10 percent). When asked about barriers to keeping their jobs, girls and young women mentioned bad character of potential employees (stealing, rough talk, and lack of punctuality), low wages, and sexual harassment from bosses as the most important ones. In addition, they pointed to lack of communications skills, boyfriends’ opposition (out of jealousy), and girls’ and young women’s worries about children as other problems coming in the way of finding and keeping a job. Barriers to starting a business The main reason for not being able to start a business is the lack of starting capital (money or materials) according to focus groups participants. As with barriers to obtaining a job, lack of contacts figured prominently in the discussion on starting a business too. Lack of business skills was mentioned as the most important impediment to staying in business, with girls and young women giving examples of “people who made little profit and used the business money to pay for food instead of reinvesting in the business”. In addition, the following factors were mentioned in focus groups as problems to start and stay in business, but not ranked among the most important: (i) regulations, referring to the fact that 16 years olds cannot sell legally in the street; (ii) lack of market information, referring to problems of knowing market prices and the fact that girls and young women felt that sometimes people took advantage of them because of asymmetries of information; (iii) lack of customers given that there was high competition among businesses; (iv) boyfriends’ opposition (out of jealousy); and (v) girls’ and young women’s worries about their children.
Girls Vulnerability in Liberia The conclusion that emerges from the evidence presented in this report is that girls and young women in Greater Monrovia and peri-urban areas of the capital live in a very fragile environment fraught with risks and problems which make them extremely vulnerable. The combination of an unstable family environment, poverty, a high level of physical and sexual violence, cultural acceptance of abusive practices like transactional sex, and the fact that many girls and young women are mothers themselves is an extremely dangerous cocktail which puts girls and young women in a very vulnerable position. This will affect girls’ and young women’s ability to participate in training, and to focus on it and to be able to learn. This will also impact a successful transition from training to work and girls’ and young women’s ability to find and keep jobs. The main risks and factors contributing to girls’ and young women’s vulnerability identified by the report include:
Most of the items in the list contribute to girls’ and young women’s vulnerability and threaten girls’ and young women’s development by: (i) jeopardizing their accumulation of human capital (either education or health - including psychological wellbeing and physical safety); and (ii) curtailing girls’ and young women’s opportunities for economic empowerment (by limiting their participation in training activities provided by this and similar projects). The risks that girls and young women experience are partly caused, and their consequences aggravated, by the absence of traditionally protective structures and contributing factors for healthy youth development, usually available in society, but lacking in Liberia’s post-conflict context. Family, social networks, community social infrastructure, and services for youth are some of them.
In spite of the numerous challenges, girls and young women perceive themselves as agents of change rather than victims. Interestingly - and despite all the challenges that they face - when asked about whether is good or bad to be young in Liberia, the unanimous response from focus groups participants was that it is good to be young. However, this may express the perception of girls and young women in relation to ‘how bad’ it is to be an adult in Liberia today. However, from the point of view of the EPAG project, one important conclusion is that youngsters do not see themselves as victims but rather as agents of change ready to ‘help their families and their country’ as some of them put it. Most of the young people interviewed showed a lot of dynamism, combining school and work, or engaging full time in income generating activities. Implications for the Project One of the most important finding of the report is the critical dilemma that girls and young women will face between participating in project activities and earning money. This is one of the highest risks that the project faces from the demand side (participants behavior), as the need to earn (either to fully support or to contribute to support their families) seems to be such that girls and young women cannot afford not to work. During training, this may imply that girls and young women may need to choose between working and attending the training. In the transition from training to work, this may imply that girls and young women may need to focus on jobs rather than apprenticeships (especially if apprenticeships are long or unpaid), or, if faced with the choice, they will select economic activities which offer quick returns compared to others where the investment period is longer. The project needs to give serious consideration to this risk and design strategies to mitigate it. The next section on recommendations elaborates on some of the options. Motherhood, family responsibilities, and domestic work are key activities for girls and young women which may come in the way of training, finding jobs, and keeping certain types of jobs. Statistics point to a significant involvement of girls and young women in taking care of family members. This has direct implications for girls’ and young women’s participation in the labor market (41 percent of girls and young women cite this as a reason for their inactivity). Similarly, the overwhelming majority of girls and young women interviewed in the survey preferred self-employment to working for others, mainly because of lack of skills, but also because it allows them to balance work and family responsibilities. Family responsibilities will as well limit girls’ and young women’s ability to participate in training, and whether they are concentrated and adequately focused to learn. Sexual abuse and harassment from training instructors, employers, and other actors involved in project implementation is an important threat to the project. While difficult to ascertain through hard data, qualitative information points to sexual abuse and harassment from teachers and training instructors as a well-established practice in training programs as well as in the school system in Monrovia and across Liberia. Focus group participants as well as government officials recognize the importance of the issue. Sexual harassment is an important threat to the project because of its deplorable consequences for girls’ and young women’s well-being and empowerment, because the perceived risk of sexual harassment lowers girls’ willingness to be trained, and because of its potential reputational risks for the World Bank and the Nike Foundation. The project cannot claim to empower girls and young women if this type of practice occurs during training. Under such circumstances, the project needs to give due consideration to developing mechanisms to ensure that training is provided under safe conditions. The recommendations section of this report explores some of the options available to combat sexual abuse in the context of the project. The absence of protective factors for girls and young women healthy development implies that the project will need to invest in creating some of them. A strong soft services component to complement mainstream training and labor market activities will be key to the success of the project. The absence of a supportive environment and the lack of protective mechanisms (such as families, communities, social capital, or options for healthy life-style) imply that the project will need to invest in building some of these mechanisms. This will minimize threats to the project coming from girls’ and young women’s personal and socio-demographic background. Such mechanisms may range from psycho-social counselling to institutional strengthening of girls’ and young women’s groups, to recreation and healthy life-style related activities. A detailed description of potential activities for this component is presented in the next section. Finally, the project needs to seriously consider the role of service providers and the level of outsourcing, and identify incentives for providers to deliver ‘quality services’. Many of the risks identified in this report can be prevented, mitigated, or circumvented through appropriate project design. However, outsourcing services to external providers has important implications for the ability of the project to control these risks. The trade-off between efficiency (through outsourcing) and quality (through own implementation) must be taken into account when defining the level of involvement of external service providers. If full outsourcing is considered, the project needs to identify the right incentives, and implement adequate monitoring mechanisms to ensure that providers deliver ‘quality services’. Quality services are understood as, among other things, those whose design and delivery include strategies to mitigate the key risks identified by this report.
This section offers the main recommendations for project design. Table 6.1 presents mitigation strategies associated with the different risks identified in this report and classifies the strategies according to their impact (in reducing key risks) and their cost or operational complexity. This section puts together different strategies in order to create key features of project design. It also presents key partnerships for the project to consider, and overall recommendations on how to use the findings of this assessment during project design and implementation. 6.1 Key features of project design Options to offset the trade- off between earning and participating in project’s activities First, according to the survey and focus groups findings, the training should be free of charge. This should include training materials (if any) and probably transport. Secondly, the project needs to consider one of the following: (i) providing a stipend conditioned on participation in training; (ii) providing a targeted grant to the most needy participants; and/or (iii) providing food for training (in the form or one or two meals) to training participants. Different options have different advantages and disadvantages as well as different costs. While food for training may not convey the image of the training model that the project wants to promote, it may tackle another immediate problem which is girls’ and young women’s lack of focus and inability to learn if they are hungry. This option may need to extend the provision of food to the children of girls and young women participating in the program. This may still be a partial solution however, if girls and young women are in need of money to cover other basic needs like rent. However, by alleviating the immediate need of providing for themselves and for their direct dependents, the food-for-work option may be a good solution for many girls and young women. The stipend and the targeted grant may end up being the same if most of the girls and young women targeted are really disadvantaged. It is the best solution to the problem, but it has a high cost for the project and may send the wrong signal for trainees. Regardless of the decision about the appropriate mechanism during the training program, it is recommended that there be a stipend/wage during the apprenticeship period. Childcare services Given girls’ and young women’s family responsibilities and high rates of adolescent motherhood, the project should provide some sort of formal or informal childcare arrangement. There are several options for the provision of childcare services including: direct delivery of the childcare services by training service providers, community-based informal childcare arrangements, vouchers/payments for private service providers, or childcare facilities in markets if training is provided in marketplaces. The final choice will largely depend on the location of the project and the particular options available in the area. However, regardless of the area, if vouchers/payments for private service providers is selected, the project should consider closely monitoring service providers to avoid a misuse of the cash/vouchers. Given girls’ and young women’s acute need for cash in Monrovia, the risk exists that participants will use the payments or even the vouchers (through collusion with childcare service providers) for things other than childcare services. Project outreach strategy and campaign The project could use its outreach strategy to address some of the risks that girls and young women face. The strategy should target communities. Different aspects of the strategy should be used at different stages of project implementation. At the beginning of the project, community meetings should be used to inform community members of the objectives and activities of the project, and get their buy-in so as to avoid suspicions and potential community backlash. Special emphasis should be made to ensure the participation of the guardians (and/or boyfriends) of the girls and young women, along with the girls and young women themselves. Throughout the life of the project, continuous involvement with the communities, in the form of investment in soft infrastructure for the youth in general (not only girls and young women) like tournaments, funding of sports materials, etc. could be done, if problems of community backlash arose. General recommendations about training
Options to combat sexual abuse The use of female instructors as trainers would mitigate the problem of sexual harassment. However, it is difficult to find female instructors, especially for non-traditional female types of skills. If the type of training allows it (because it is not too complex), the project could consider investing in creating a pool of female trainers using intensive Training of Trainers with young college graduates. This may be costly and difficult to implement. However, since sexual abuse is an important risk for girls and young women, as well as reputational risk for the project, the project needs to give due consideration to searching mechanisms to make sure training is provided under safe conditions. Alternatively, or in combination with female teachers, male instructors (and employers participating in the apprenticeship program) should be trained on ethics and gender. They should commit to the project’s ‘code of conduct’ which will include among other things a zero tolerance policy for sexual abuse, transactional sex, or bribery. Additionally, the project needs to put in place accessible reporting mechanisms for girls and young women to inform of any misbehavior/complain regarding trainers. Social empowerment services for girls and young women The project should provide support services to strengthen and complement girls’ and young women’s economic empowerment. The objective of such services is to socially empower girls and young women, to improve their ability to function in society at all levels while and after they have acquired their marketable skills. The activities under this component would help increase girls’ and young women’s self-esteem, as well as to promote informal support structures for girls and young women to fall back on, breaking the vicious circle caused by poverty, isolation, and weak social capital. The creation of girls’ clubs is a fundamental part of this component, and considerable effort should be put into the formation and institutional strengthening of the club to make it cohesive and functional. The club could then become the hub for the delivery of the rest of services (psychosocial counselling, family planning, parenting skills training, leadership training, conflict resolution skills training, life skills related activities, gender awareness (including about the issue of transactional sex in Liberia), sports and other recreation activities. Additionally, early on in the project, the girls’ clubs should carry out a map of support services available to girls and young women in the community (churches, women’s groups, health clubs, children welfare committees, other types of institutions) and links should be promoted between the girls’ club and these institutions with a view to extend the social support network. Finally, peer support mechanisms could be promoted so that girls and young women can check on each other and follow up and report to the project critical problems affecting some of the members – which may lead to drop out. 6.2 Key partnerships to enhance girls’ and young women’s economic empowerment. The following partnerships and agreements are recommended for different purposes.
6.3 How to use the findings of the Vulnerabilities Assessment In addition to inform the general lines of project design, and help shape the main features of the project, the project team could use the findings and detailed recommendations of this assessment to guide the selection process of the external service providers. The project implementation team could build a matrix with the key risks identified by the assessment and evaluate potential service providers on the basis of their proposals to address these risks. The recommendation section, and table 6.1, offer some guidance on how to address the risks identified, but service providers may come up with equally valid alternatives to mitigate them.
REFERENCES Blum, R. W. 1998. "Healthy Youth Development as a Model for Youth Health Promotion: A Review." Journal of Adolescent Health 22(5): 368-75. Government of Liberia, 2008, Liberia Poverty Reduction Strategy. Available at http://www.emansion.gov.lr/ Mercy Corps, 2007, Liberia Urban Development. Monrovia: Mercy Corps. Richards, P., Archibald, S., Bruce, B., Modad, W., Mulbah, E., Varpilah, T., Vincent, J., January 2005, Community Cohesion in Liberia: A post war Rapid Social Assessment. Social Development Paper No. 21. Washington DC: The World Bank. UN, 2006, Country Common Assessment. Monrovia UNICEF, 2007, Impact Evaluation of the Reintegration Program for Children Associated with the Armed Forces. April 2007. Monrovia: UNICEF. UNFPA, UNHCR, UNDP, LISGIS, 2008, Liberia’s Participatory Poverty Assessment Dataset, unpublished. World Bank, 2003, Youth at Risk in the Caribbean: Issues and Policy Directions. Washington DC: World Bank. ANNEX I. FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE Participants’ characteristics
General Issues about youth in Liberia
Girls’ problems to participate and stay in training
Training Design
Girls’ problems in the transition from training to work
Project design
ANNEX II. GIRLS’ VULNERABILITY SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||