Creating Healthy Approaches to Success (CHATS) Girls' Club Program

  • P Project/Program

I Inactive

Key Information

Creating Healthy Approaches to success (CHATS) is a three-year after-school program after aimed at helping scholars achieve academic success and gain life skills. CHATS Clubs help to provide girls with the tools they need to self-advocate for their own life choices, be empowered with information about their sexual and reproductive health, and learn critical skills that will help them generate income and be prosperous.Throughout the first two years, Girl’s CHATS Club participants cover fundamental life and leadership skills such as sexual and reproductive health, group facilitation, gender and rights, as well as self advocacy. These soft skills are important for girls’ emotional development and are shown to keep them engaged and enrolled in secondary school.The third year of the CHATS focuses on a comprehensive entrepreneurship program where girls learn fundamental skills for starting and maintaining small businesses. Girls then have the unique opportunity to put their learning into practice by starting their own entrepreneurial ventures and engaging with the community. Through the entrepreneurship and community engagement components of CHATS our scholars are creating a market for themselves within and beyond their communities. AGE Africa transitioned its CHATS programming to a radio format (Ticheze Atsikana Radio) during the COVID-19 lockdown. Girls are most vulnerable when they’re out of school, and education access is a fundamental pillar of all AGE Africa programming. During the global emergency, AGE Africa had to quickly pivot that programming to adapt to the needs of our scholars. The Creating Healthy Approaches to Success (CHATS) life skills curriculum and program shifted from an afterschool club for girls to a local radio program reaching girls across Malawi’s southern region, including the Mangochi District. 


Lead Implementing Organization(s)

Location(s)

Sub-Saharan Africa

Malawi

Government Affiliation

Government-affiliated program

Years

2013 - 2019

Ministry Affiliation

Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MoEST)

Funder(s)

Not applicable or unknown

COVID-19 Response

Adapted

Geographic Scope

National

Meets gender-transformative education criteria from the TES  

Unknown

Areas of Work Back to Top

Education areas

Attainment

  • Secondary completion
  • Secondary Enrollment

Other

  • Remote Learning

Other skills

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

Quality

  • Curricula/lesson plans

Cross-cutting areas

  • COVID-19 Response
  • Economic/livelihoods (including savings/financial inclusion, etc.)
  • Empowerment
  • Gender equality
  • Mentorship
  • Social and gender norms and beliefs

Program participants

Target Audience(s)

Girls in school

Age

Not applicable or unknown

School Enrolment Status

All in school

School Level

  • Lower secondary
  • Upper secondary

Other populations reached

  • Other community members - female
  • Other community members - male

Participants include

Not applicable or unknown

Program Approaches Back to Top

Increased availability of learning materials

  • Educational Radio or Television Programs

Learning while working

  • Work-study

Life skills education

  • Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE)
  • Gender, rights and power

Mentoring/psychosocial support

  • Peer mentors

Reducing economic barriers

  • Income-generating activities

School-related gender-based violence

  • Support in and around schools (e.g. peer counseling, adult-to-student counseling)

Women's empowerment programs

  • Empowerment training
  • Leadership training
  • Self-help groups (non-financial)

Program Goals Back to Top

Education goals

  • Improved academic skills (literacy and numeracy)
  • Improved social and emotional learning/skills and mindsets
  • Increased grade attainment
  • Increased secondary school completion
  • Increased years of schooling

Cross-cutting goals

  • Changed social norms
  • Improved critical consciousness
  • Improved sexual and reproductive health
  • Increased employment/job-related skills
  • Increased knowledge of rights
  • More equitable gender attitudes and norms
  • Reduced adolescent pregnancy/childbearing
  • Reduced child marriage