By Jaime Villalobos, Adolescent and Youth Adviser, Sonal Rai, Manger Health & Nutrition (Policy & Government Engagement), & Silvia Alayon, Nutrition Lead Advisor, Delaney Ward, Lead Associate Program Management
Responsive programming for development is best achieved when diverse stakeholders are brought to the table.
Yet, in many cases, when it relates to interventions to meet the needs of adolescents, their engagement can be tokenistic, and adolescents may not be viewed as meaningful partners in decision-making.
Adolescents have the right to actively participate in matters that impact their lives and well-being.
Programmes designed to meet the needs of adolescents are more relevant, sustainable, and impactful when adolescents’ leadership and participation is fostered. The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health’s (PMNCH’s) What Young People Want campaign has been one attempt to highlight the needs of young people in their own words.
In this blog, we share insights from our programmes in Bolivia, India, and Tanzania that highlight how Save the Children prioritizes the inclusion of adolescents in the entire process of design, planning, and implementation, and why meaningful adolescent engagement is vital to our work.
Designing water, sanitation, & hygiene interventions through adolescent participation in Bolivia
Pathways to Wellbeing, Empowerment, and Resilience for Adolescents and Youth (POWER 4 AY) is a groundbreaking programme implemented in Bolivia, Albania, Nepal, and Uganda supported by Save the Children Italy. The programme includes interventions in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for young people most affected by inequality and discrimination.
The POWER 4 AY project in Bolivia utilizes User-Centred Community Engagement (UCCE), in partnership with its creator Eclipse Experience Limited, as an innovative approach to ensure adolescent participation.
UCCE helps projects understand communities’ WASH needs, then co-creates solutions with members of those communities. In Bolivia, POWER 4 AY adapted UCCE for WASH interventions in two Social Reintegration Centres, which house at-risk adolescents, as well as within a centre that cares for adolescents with intellectual disabilities.
To start with, the project team collected data from the centres via digital surveys and interactive heat maps to better understand the centres’ WASH issues and “suffer points.” These methods were designed to be engaging for people with cognitive disabilities or for those who lack literacy skills.
The survey results were reviewed alongside adolescents in the centres to jointly discuss the revealed issues, identify root causes, and propose solutions. Some of the issues revealed included lack of locks on bathroom doors, lack of hot water and adequate time to shower, not enough hygiene materials, overcrowding leading to conflict, and the need for expanded toilet facilities.
Finally, decision-making sessions with the adolescents were conducted to agree on official ways forward for WASH interventions at each centre.
After this co-creation process, each of these centres were able to improve and expand their water, shower, laundry, and bathroom facilities, and improve safety measures and access to hygienic materials for the adolescents.
Beyond WASH, adolescents expressed other desires, such as “train the Centre´s staff to avoid violence… access to TV... recreation and sport materials...[and] we should be allowed to listen to music as music is our life,” which illustrates just how much adolescents want their voices to be heard.
The project aims to continue to address these issues as well as train the adolescents on life skills, sexual and reproductive health, and economic empowerment.
“A very powerful moment I had from this experience is when a child with intellectual disability at the María Cristina Shelter took my hand and led me to feel the water coming out of their new showers. From his smile I understood that this was a big change. The water was hot! This was something that the child could not access before.” – Boris Cortés, POWER 4 AY, Bolivia Program Manager.
The participatory process followed by POWER 4 AY ensured that the project listened to adolescents’ insights and built trust in and ownership of the project to implement truly relevant and impactful interventions.
An adapted UCCE methodology is now being applied by the project for other interventions beyond WASH, such as to lead the design of social projects by adolescents where they identify and implement strategies to address broad problems within their communities.
Adolescent engagement for sexual & reproductive health & rights in India
In India, the New Horizon Plus project utilizes another model for adolescent engagement to transform ingrained social practices that subject adolescents to discrimination and restrict their access to information and decision-making. Through Behaviour Change Communication (BCC), the project challenges harmful social and gender-based norms with an emphasis on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
Like many countries, India grapples with deeply entrenched social norms that perpetuate discrimination, early marriage, and gender-based violence against adolescent girls. These norms hinder their access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities, impacting their development and well-being.
The New Horizon Plus project acknowledges that, to drive lasting change, we must address these norms at their core. Aligned with the government priorities, the BCC models are therefore used to guide tailored messaging, community engagement, and awareness-building to challenge existing norms and foster a more inclusive and equitable environment for adolescents.
The New Horizon Plus project is providing a safe and reliable resource for adolescents, and their parents and families, to access accurate information about SRHR.
Additionally, Bal Raksha Bharat (Save the Children India), in consultation with local government, has developed a SRHR training module titled "Nayi Soch Nayi Shuruwat" (New Thinking New Beginning), which is a comprehensive SRHR training programme tailored for adolescent girls and boys.
The programme has successfully trained a significant number of adolescents, and these adolescents now work as peer educators to influence and sensitize their peers on SRHR. Overall, the New Horizon Plus programme empowers adolescents to access accurate information about their SRHR, identify the challenges they face, engage in open discussions, and find solutions, enabling them to make informed decisions about their lives and well-being.
Designing nutrition interventions through adolescent engagement in Tanzania
The USAID Lishe Endelevu was a five-year project (2018-2023) led by Save the Children to improve the nutritional status of women of reproductive age, children under five, and adolescent girls across four regions of Tanzania. Adolescents make up 20% of Tanzania’s population, yet there was previously little evidence around adolescent nutrition and no social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) materials for adolescent programming.
In response, the project used a mix of social and behaviour change approaches to mobilise and engage both in- and out-of-school adolescents, including adapting SBCC materials from Ethiopia to the Tanzanian context. Between 2021 and 2023, Lishe Endelevu reached over 380,000 adolescent boys and girls with nutrition education.
The project engaged support groups led by trained community health workers and volunteers to reach out-of-school adolescents with nutrition education and to promote recommended adolescent nutrition behaviours. After seeing the popularity of support groups among adolescents, the project established school health and nutrition clubs, eventually reaching 625 schools.
After adapting adolescent nutrition SBCC materials, Lishe Endelevu pre-tested the new materials with adolescent girls, their parents, and teachers, to ensure they were tailored to the needs and interests of adolescents. These included skills-building nutrition games like the Earn & Buy Game, which fully engage adolescents by being interactive, fun, and educational. Many schools also established school gardens, and some began keeping small animals, such as rabbits, acting as learning centres for their communities.
Lishe Endelevu highlighted the role that adolescents can play as change agents in their homes and communities. When staffing challenges in schools limited the availability of teachers to deliver nutrition education, they equipped students to serve as peer educators to teach others.
Adolescents translated their knowledge into practice within their homes and communities, using what they learned to establish home gardens, raise small animals like rabbits and chickens, and share nutrition messages and practices with their families.
Going forward, we are exploring how integrating advisory groups comprising of adolescents can strengthen research and program design.
Include us or lose us!
Adolescents are a dynamic, diverse, and illustrious demographic - capable of articulating their needs and designing impactful interventions to solve the critical challenges they face.
With just seven years to realize the Sustainable Development Goals, governments, policymakers and CSO partners must prioritise partnership with adolescents and young people and invest in mechanisms for their safe and meaningful participation in decision making.
Photo: Junior, 16, and Apollonia, 15, at their school in the Solomon Islands.
Photo credit: Conor Ashleigh / Save the Children
