BALIKA (Bangladeshi Association for Life Skills, Income, and Knowledge for Adolescents)

  • R Research Project/Report/Study

I Inactive

Key Information

In 2012 the Population Council and partners embarked on BALIKA program, a four-year study to identify effectiveness of skills-building approaches to empower girls and delaying their marriages in communities with highest rate of child marriages. The BALIKA program is designed to generate knowledge about factors underlying early and child marriage, through an integrated intervention and research study to build the evidence base for alternative strategies for effective, replicable programs to delay marriage by offering three distinct interventions and assessing their impact relative to each other and relative to a control population. While basic lifeskills training by locally recruited mentors in safe spaces for girls and community mobilization are common to all intervention villages, they differ in terms of additional emphasis on three intervention strategies: rights-based life skills, livelihoods support, and education support. The study is a randomized controlled trial involving more than 9,000 girls aged 12–18 in 72 intervention communities and 24 control communities in three districts in southern Bangladesh: Khulna, Satkhira, and Narail. This is the first rigorously evaluated study to provide evidence on approaches to delay child marriage in Bangladesh.


Lead Implementing Organization(s)

Location(s)

South Asia

Bangladesh

Government Affiliation

Government-affiliated program

Years

2012 - 2016

Partner(s)

Population Services and Training Center (PSTC), mPower, Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen (CIDIN)

Ministry Affiliation

Bangladesh Ministry of Women and Children Affairs

Funder(s)

Embassy of The Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN)

COVID-19 Response

Unknown

Geographic Scope

National

Meets gender-transformative education criteria from the TES  

Unknown

Areas of Work Back to Top

Education areas

Attainment

  • Primary to secondary transition

Other

  • Transition from school to work

Other skills

  • Financial literacy
  • Life skills/sexuality education
  • Rights/empowerment education
  • Social and emotional learning

Cross-cutting areas

  • Adolescent pregnancy/childbearing
  • Community sensitization
  • Early/child marriage
  • Economic/livelihoods (including savings/financial inclusion, etc.)
  • Empowerment
  • Gender equality
  • HIV and STIs
  • Menstrual hygiene management
  • Mentorship
  • Nutrition
  • Other aspects of sexual and reproductive health
  • Other cultural practices
  • Sexual harassment & coercion
  • Social and gender norms and beliefs
  • Violence (at home, in relationships)

Program participants

Target Audience(s)

Girls (both in school and out of school), Youth

Age

12 - 19

School Enrolment Status

Some in school

School Level

  • Upper secondary

Other populations reached

Not applicable or unknown

Participants include

Not applicable or unknown

Program Approaches Back to Top

Community engagement/advocacy/sensitization

  • Community mobilization

Health and childcare services

  • Adolescent-friendly health services
  • Maternal and child health services
  • Sexual and reproductive health services (including family planning)

Other

  • Other activities to end child marriage (not captured above)

Social/gender norms change

  • Work with community leaders
  • Work with religious leaders

Women's empowerment programs

  • Empowerment training

Program Goals Back to Top

Education goals

  • Improved academic skills (literacy and numeracy)
  • Increased progression to secondary school
  • Increased re-enrolment in school among out-of-school children
  • Increased secondary school completion
  • Increased years of schooling
  • Reduced grade repetition

Cross-cutting goals

  • Changed social norms
  • Improved understanding of sexual harassment, coercion, and consent
  • Increased employment/job-related skills
  • Increased knowledge of HIV, puberty, and sexual and reproductive health
  • Increased knowledge of rights
  • More equitable gender attitudes and norms
  • Reduced child marriage

Additional Information Back to Top

Primary Contact

Eashita Farzana Haque
Population Council
ehaque@popcouncil.org