Endline Results Brief: What works to improve outcomes for Kenya\u27s adolescent girls?

The Adolescent Girls Initiative–Kenya is a study that evaluates the long-term impact of a multisectoral intervention targeted at adolescent girls aged 11 to 15 years from Kibera and rural Wajir. The intervention consists of four components: a community-based violence-prevention program, an education conditional cash transfer (CCT), health-focused girls-empowerment clubs, and wealth creation for girls via financial education and savings. A random selection of 6,000 girls were exposed to different components of the intervention. Key results, noted in this brief, are: conditional cash transfers are a key driver of improvement in education outcomes, and of delaying sexual debut and pregnancy in Kibera, and delaying marriage and pregnancy in Wajir. Cash transfers can still be effective in the long term if delivered only during critical windows of vulnerability. Girls empowerment groups may need to be carried out over longer periods of time to sustain effect. A multilevel, multisectoral approach to girls’ programming is a promising approach providing a wider range of outcomes as well as being more cost-effective than single-component interventions