evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

No Means No Worldwide — IMPower & Ujamaa Empowerment Self-Defense and Bystander Programme, Nairobi

Kenya · Nairobi · See the Kenya profile · See the Nairobi profile

Evidence: Randomised controlled trial Top 17% 89/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

In Nairobi's informal settlements, a paired girls' empowerment/self-defense and boys' bystander curriculum cut sexual assault by 3.7 percentage points in a cluster-randomised trial of 5,686 students, with over a third of assaulted girls using trained skills to stop an attack.

3.7 percentage points
Reduction in past-year sexual assault (intervention vs control) (Oct 2013–Oct 2014)
3,147
Girls enrolled in intervention schools
2,539
Girls enrolled in control schools
35 %
Assaulted girls who used self-defense skills to stop an attack
1,543
Boys enrolled in bystander study (2015)
No Means No Worldwide — IMPower & Ujamaa Empowerment Self-Defense and Bystander Programme, Nairobi

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ujamaa-Africa / No Means No Worldwide
Period
2009–ongoing (cluster-RCT evaluation Oct 2013–Oct 2014; bystander study 2015)
Keywords
gender-based violence prevention, youth empowerment, education, self-defense training

Context

No Means No Worldwide (NMNW) and its Kenyan implementing partner Ujamaa-Africa run a paired six-week curriculum in Nairobi's informal settlements — including Korogocho, Huruma, Dandora, Kibera and Mukuru — pairing a girls' self-defense programme ('IMPower') with a boys' bystander-intervention curriculum ('Your Moment of Truth').

Activities

Trained local instructors deliver the paired curricula in upper-primary and secondary schools, teaching girls verbal, physical and self-defense strategies to resist sexual assault while training boys to recognise coercive situations and intervene safely as bystanders.

Results

A matched-pairs cluster-randomised trial enrolled 3,147 girls in 14 intervention schools against 2,539 girls in 14 control schools and found a statistically significant 3.7-percentage-point reduction in past-year sexual assault; among assaulted girls in intervention schools, 35% reported using the taught skills to stop an attack. A separate 2015 study of 1,543 boys found trained bystanders were at least twice as likely as controls to safely intervene, with effects persisting at nine months.

Conclusions

The paired design, evaluated through a peer-reviewed randomised trial, has since been extended by NMNW to other African countries, indicating both credible evidence and demonstrated replicability.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
trained local instructors (Ujamaa-Africa)

Conditions for success

  • delivery through upper-primary and secondary schools already embedded in target communities
  • pairing a girls' self-defense curriculum with a boys' bystander curriculum to shift norms on both sides of sexual violence

Where it fits

Governance type
NGO-delivered in partnership with schools
Scale
informal settlements in Nairobi
Income level
low-income

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Replication kit

Reusable artefacts from this practice — as published by their sources.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

Similar practices you may find useful