ADDRESSING THE DRIVERS OF CHILD MARRIAGE IN BANGLADESH
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The Bangladeshi Association for Life Skills, Income, and Knowledge for Adolescents (BALIKA) was designed to delay child marriage, which increases the risk of gender-based violence and maternal mortality. To address the drivers of child marriage, the programme provides basic life-skills education, plus education support, additional life-skills training, or livelihoods training to empower girls aged 12 to 18 and to improve their status within communities.
Participants received 44 hours of basic life-skills training, including information on sexual and reproductive health, decision making, and negotiation. They also had 100 additional hours of training via one of the following interventions:
- Education support through tutoring in math and English for girls who were in school and training in computing or financial skills for girls who were not in school
- Additional life-skills training on gender rights and negotiation, critical thinking, and decision-making
- Livelihoods training in entrepreneurship, servicing mobile phones, photography, and first aid
The programme was conducted in safe spaces, such as primary schools, and delivered by locally recruited young women (mentors) with the assistance of a teacher who worked part time with the project after school hours.
A four-arm cluster randomised controlled trial compared the effectiveness of the three intervention packages with a control arm (no intervention):
01 Education support and basic life-skills training
02 Additional and basic life-skills training
03 Livelihoods and basic life-skills training
Across the three interventions, the girls in BALIKA communities were 23 to 31 percent less likely than girls in the control group to be married as children and were less likely to tolerate violence or arranged marriage, among other positive outcomes.
BALIKA was implemented by the Population Council, the Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen, and mPower, with funding from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. If you want to adapt the programme, we strongly recommend that you contact them first.
- Community engagement alone may not lead to the intended outcomes and should instead be implemented along with skill-building and other activities.
- The location of programme sessions is an important consideration to ensure safety and accessibility for participants. BALIKA chose public meeting spaces such as local schools familiar to the girls and away from unsafe areas.
- Technology such as computers, mobile phones, and tablets can be used to engage participants and deliver intervention components.
- Community-led and community-owned interventions strengthen the link between participants and mentors.
“EARLIER I USED TO HAVE PROBLEMS WITH MY HUSBAND ON VARIOUS ISSUES. AT THAT TIME HE USED TO STOP TALKING TO ME [DURING ARGUMENTS], AND I USED TO DO THE SAME. THIS PROBLEM LINGERED FOR A LONG TIME. BUT I WAS RIGID NOT TO COMPROMISE. HOWEVER, FROM THE BALIKA PROGRAMME I CAME TO KNOW ABOUT MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING. WE ARE BEING TAUGHT HOW TO COME TO A COMMON GROUND EVEN WHEN WE ARE ANGRY.”
BALIKA MEMBER, KALIA, NARAIL