Unite for a Better Life (UBL) — Gender-Transformative Violence Prevention Curriculum, Rural Ethiopia

Unite for a Better Life (UBL) is a 14-session, gender-transformative curriculum delivered through the format of the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony — a community discussion forum — to address gender norms, alcohol misuse and household decision-making alongside intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV risk. It was tested in Mareko, Meskan, Silte and Sodo districts of the Gurage zone, Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region, delivered by EngenderHealth with Addis Ababa University School of Public Health and the Ethiopian Public Health Association.
A cluster-randomised controlled trial (Sharma et al., 2020, PLOS Medicine) randomised 64 villages and 6,770 households to a men's-only, women's-only, couples', or control arm, with an 88% follow-up rate. Only the men's-only arm produced statistically significant reductions in IPV: male perpetration of physical and/or sexual IPV fell significantly (adjusted odds ratio 0.78, p=0.037) and women's experience of physical/sexual IPV also fell significantly in that arm (AOR 0.81, p=0.036). The women's-only and couples' arms showed no significant reduction in physical IPV, and only weak evidence of reduced sexual IPV — a result the study authors and independent programme reviewers have flagged as an important caution against assuming any gender-transformative format works equally well regardless of who is in the room.
A companion cost-effectiveness analysis (2021) found the men's-only arm was also the most efficient: about $1,430 per case of IPV averted among direct participants (versus $3,275 for the couples' arm), and roughly $102 per case averted when counting wider community-level reductions. No evidence of national scale-up or continued funding beyond the trial period was identified in available sources, so long-term sustainability remains unproven.

Read the full analysis: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/items/1854f5d6-2250-42c1-9953-c5bf3bf5cbbc