Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP): Endline results—Executive summary

Adolescent girls in Zambia face a range of risks and vulnerabilities that challenge their healthy development from girls into young women, and they often lack the social, health, and economic assets that are necessary to mitigate these risks. The issues that confront vulnerable girls—high rates of gender-based violence, unsafe sex that puts girls at risk for unwanted pregnancies and HIV infections, school dropout, lack of economic resources and income-generating options, and lack of agency and participation—are interdependent and have similar causes. The vulnerabilities confronting Zambian adolescent girls formed the basis for designing the Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP), which 1) focused on adolescent girls aged 10–19, 2) delivered community-based interventions, and 3) selected participants for the program with the direct intention of capturing those girls who were the most vulnerable. This brief presents AGEP’s endline results, including conclusions, recommendations for policymakers, and recommendations for donors and researchers in the hope that this evaluation will contribute to the improvement of current programs, as well as development of new programs and funding strategies