Welcome back to the biannual CEFM Learning Xchange Newsletter! In this edition, we’re sharing a webinar about applying theory to practice with social norms programming, a new podcast about learning from failure in CEFM research, a girls’ activist curriculum and other ready-to-use program and evaluation tools, updates from SVRI, and some inspiration to keep you going in this journey. Please peruse and enjoy!

You can stay engaged with the CEFM Learning Xchange through workplace, this listserv and our webinars.

In Solidarity,

Tipping Point Initiative

Lessons Learned: RCTs and Communities

Listen to the latest episode of CARE Failing Forward, in which Dipendra Sharma (Team Lead, Tipping Point, Nepal) and Anne Sprinkel (Project Director, Tipping Point) discuss their experience with the Phase 2 randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate Tipping Point, and the risks of sacrificing communities’ needs to fulfill the methodological demands of research.

Featured Resource: Girls Not Brides’ Stand Up, Speak Out Activist Training

Young people are the most affected by child marriage: we are not going to end this harmful practice without them. Girls Not Brides developed a youth activism training program, called “Stand Up, Speak Out”. These training resources (available in English and Hindi) offer you a carefully planned series of workshops, all designed to empower young people; both by building knowledge around child marriage and by strengthening the skills they need to become powerful change makers.

Promising Practices and Resources

Videos about working with adolescents to prevent child marriage in the MENA region (Arabic with English subtitles)

CARE has an established global expertise on ASRH programming through the CARE Global SRHR team. The MENA team also has developed and tracked the Impact Growth Strategy “The Future She Deserves”; along with an online platform of ASRH tools and approaches used in humanitarian context. In addition, MENA has produced several videos to inform adolescents on ASRH topics and initiate dialogue with their parents and community members; conducted research in crisis effected countries on CEFM through the CARE Tipping Point Project; piloted Young Mothers Club project implemented by the Northern Syria team in collaboration with UNFPA and its local partner, Syria Relief and Development and the Inter-Agency Working Group for SRH in Crisis-Settings engagement.

In these videos, Community Ambassadors are discussing how they engage with adolescents and the communities to prevent child marriage, and help mitigate the negative effects of CEFM. These videos address everything from SRHR to education. The link also contains a learning brief on ASRH in MENA.

Tipping Point’s Participant Manuals, M&E Methods Briefs, and Evaluation Tools

Tipping Point has produced integrated implementation manuals following our core program pillars of girls’ movement building, social norms, adolescent SRHR, and alternatives for girls. The first of a series of manuals is now available here. Coming soon: religious leaders, boy activists, adolescent VSLA and more!

Additionally, Tipping Point has just released a series of monitoring and evaluation methods briefs that detail how to use feminist and developmental evaluation methods to assess social norms change. Check them out here! Stay tuned for more!

Finally, our Phase 2 mixed method evaluation tools are available for adaptation and use here. We hope that they are helpful as you work to also assess changes in gender inequitable social norms.

“Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?” Insights form Applying Theory to Norms Programming

This webinar helps explain how and why labor-intensive norms-informed interventions are worth the effort, and how you can do it for your programming. It also does a great job of showing how the theories and practice about gender norms and social norms can work together to create positive change. 

SVRI The Sexual Violence Research Initiative hosted their annual forum October 21-24, 2019. Several important discussions related to CEFM occurred, including a presentation on norms-shifting interventions through a side event for the Learning Collaborative for Normative Change by Tipping Point Project Director Anne Sprinkel. The 3 takeaways that people working to end CEFM should take away from the SVRI conference are: Implementing gender transformative and social norms approaches in emergencies is hard – but that does not mean that we can’t or shouldn’t do it. Reach out to Ezgi Emri with CARE Turkey who can tell you more about integrating GBV and SRHR approaches in a complex context or Anne Sprinkel to hear about SASA! in Dadaab refugee camp. With so much talk about gender transformative approaches – amongst which CARE Rwanda’s Indashikyrwa was consistently highlighted – there was almost no discussion of Staff Transformation and its centrality to quality, sustainable, and credible programming with communities. Scale – both processes and outcomes – and costing are both incredibly important components to document and understand to influence our partners, peers, donors and governments. However, these areas of study are severely lacking in the world of violence against women and girls. See other CARE Colleagues’ takeaways on the forum here.

Inspiration: Fuel for the fight

1. Suraiya Sultana of CARE Bangladesh captured the story of Shawnpa (pictured below), an adolescent girl who was able to improve her family relationships and correct a misunderstanding due to reflection about sexual and reproductive rights. Read Shawnpa’s story here.

2. 19-year-old Khadiza Akter Khushi led hundreds of people to the home of her soon-to-be husband. The walk is thought to be a first in a country where, for centuries, the opposite has happened: men have walked to the homes of their brides on their wedding day. For Khadiza and her husband it was, quite simply, the right thing to do. “It is a matter of women’s rights. Today, if a girl goes to marry a boy, then no one is harmed.” (BBC)