ELA — BRAC's Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents Clubs, Uganda (Randomised Trial)

ELA (Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents) is run by BRAC in Uganda. Clubs give adolescent girls a safe space, vocational training for small enterprises, and information on sexual and reproductive health and life skills.
It was evaluated by a randomised trial: a 2008 baseline of 4,800 girls and their parents across 150 urban and rural communities, with follow-up about two years later. The researchers report a 35% higher likelihood of girls engaging in income-generating activity (mainly self-employment), a 2.7 percentage-point (26%) fall in the probability of having a child, a 12.6 percentage-point rise in always using a condom, and a marked fall in girls reporting sex against their will.
Take-up was partial: 21% of girls in treated communities joined clubs and about half of them attended once or twice a week. The programme cost about $28.1 per girl in year one and $17.9 in year two. The published estimates are intention-to-treat and the authors acknowledge uncertainty about longer-term and wider societal impacts.

Read the full analysis: https://theigc.org/blogs/should-we-believe-hype-about-adolescent-girls