Girl Empower – A Gender Transformative Mentoring and Cash Transfer Intervention to Promote Adolescent Wellbeing: Impact Findings from a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial in Liberia

The Impact of Monetary Poverty Alleviation Programs on Children’s and Adolescents’ Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Across Low-, Middle-, and High-Income Countries

“…This is likely due to the fact that their narrative synthesis considers only overall effects, whereas we synthesize evidence on heterogeneous group effects. We note that both reviews contain seven papers in common [19,20,23,29,26,28,25], but differ in the remaining papers that are included (five different papers for Zimmerman et al, and seven different papers in the current review). This can likely be explained by the differences in methodology between the two papers.…”

“…However, combined cash and social programming interventions are limited in terms of the extent of risks for children and adolescents that they can address. A recent study in Liberia combining a girl empowerment (aged 13e14) program with cash transfers [23] showed no significant impacts on mental health outcomes. Although the program engaged both girls and their caregivers regarding social norms pertaining to gender and violence, it was not successful in changing caregivers' perceptions.…”

“…Although the meta-analysis suggests a small positive effect of the intervention on adolescent mental health on the aggregate, there was considerable variability in the strength and direction of the effect depending on the characteristics of the (sub)sample. Multiple cash intervention programs focus on girls specifically due to their increased vulnerabilities to, for instance, domestic and sexual violence, household and social pressures to stay outside of school, and early pregnancy (e.g., interventions [22,23,29,26]). Two programs [31,28] that include both boys and girls find differential effects by gender such that the cash transfer programs generally produce greater benefits for boys.…”

Policies and interventions to remove gender‐related barriers to girls' school participation and learning in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A systematic review of the evidence

“…The authors note that if the economic constraints faced by girls and their households are not addressed, educational outcomes are unlikely to improve, an observation also made by Stark et al (2018) in explaining the null findings for the safe spaces intervention they evaluated in Ethiopian refugee camps. In the case of the Girl Empower intervention evaluated by Özler et al (2020) in Liberia, the authors note the lack of a “systematic strategy to engage with community” in settings such as Liberia with entrenched gender norms and “habituation to conflict,” implying that establishing safe spaces alone may not be enough to either address or circumvent community‐level expectations about girls.…”

Effects of Adolescent-Focused Integrated Social Protection on Depression: A Pragmatic Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial of Tanzania’s Cash Plus Intervention

“…Several studies in Africa have examined adolescent-focused interventions which combine economic strengthening components, such as cash grants, microcredit, vocational training, and/or financial education, with sexual and reproductive health training, violence prevention, mentoring, and/or use of “safe spaces” ( 16 – 18 ). While these “bundled” programs have shown potential to facilitate safe and healthy transitions to adulthood, the results largely focus on livelihoods, experiences of violence, gender norms, and sexual and reproductive health (SRH), overlooking potential benefits for mental health.…”