Menu
In 2016, the project team began to lay the groundwork for intervention adaptation, program sustainability, and research and knowledge generation studies. Specific activities in this first project phase, Laying the Groundwork, included:
With the aim of having technical input from a range of stakeholders across the life of the project, in 2016 Save the Children established the GUG Stakeholder Reference Group (SRG)—a local advisory group comprised of nearly 50 members from government and civil society organizations. Local implementing partners (community-based organizations or CBOs) were also identified during this phase via an open call for organizations with experience working with and for young people.
In this phase, the project team reviewed existing evidence-based norms-shifting programs for very young adolescents in other parts of the world: Gender Roles, Equality, and Transformation (The GREAT Project); GrowUp Smart; and Choices, Voices, and Promises. The project team selected key approaches and materials from these programs, and the SRG validated elements from these programs for relevance in the Kinshasa context. Following this validation, focus group discussions were held with adolescents and caregivers to review the materials and gain feedback on how and whether to adapt materials to the realities of urban Kinshasa. The GUG consortium also undertook two formative activities to inform the process of adaptation. Research partners undertook a rapid assessment of policies, programs, and community context of out-of-school adolescents, while the program team applied the Social Norms Exploration Tool, a participatory learning and action approach, to better understand the social norms related to GUG’s anticipated outcomes and how these norms were enforced. Insights from this activity were used to validate and refine the intervention design and evaluation measures.
In addition, in August 2016, the project team held a workshop with SRG members to develop a preliminary scale-up plan. Guided by the ExpandNet framework and principles, participants established guidance for GUG’s institutionalization into key Congolese ministry platforms (vertical scale-up) and expansion to reach more individuals with the intervention (horizontal scale-up). This plan focused on generating credible, actionable evidence, engaging stakeholders, and developing a scalable intervention that featured a set of intuitive, flexible, and simple-to-use materials. This and subsequent workshops deepened scale-up understanding and planning, and strengthened the project team’s ability to troubleshoot problems as they arose, as part of a process known as Responsive Feedback.
