Adolescent Girls Initiative-Kenya: Baseline report

Abstract

Many adolescent girls in Kenya face considerable risks and vulnerabilities that affect their education status health and general well-being. The Adolescent Girls Initiative-Kenya (AGI-K) will deliver multi-sectoral interventions for over 5000 girls ages 11-14 in two marginalized areas of Kenya: 1) Kibera slums in Nairobi and 2) Wajir County in Northeastern Kenya. Implemented by Plan International in Kibera and Save the Children in Wajir these interventions will be implemented for two years and will comprise a combination of girl-level household-level and community-level interventions. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be used to compare the impact of four different packages of interventions together with their costs in order to assess if and how interven-ing in early adolescence will impact girls’ life chances. This report describes the intervention and research design of AGI-K as well as the findings from the baseline survey. Baseline results from Kibera and Wajir suggest that although young adolescents face a myriad of challenges the majority have not experienced risks associated with poor sexual and repro-ductive health outcomes. Intervening in the different sectors (education wealth health and violence prevention) therefore has the potential to delay or prevent negative outcomes as ado-lescents make the transition to adulthood in resource-constrained settings. Overall there were stark differences between Kibera (urban slum) and Wajir (rural area) in all four sectors. The differences between Nairobi and Wajir justify the importance of looking at these as separate substudies.