Building Assets for Safe, Productive Lives

This report summarises the proceedings of a workshop on adolescent girls’ livelihoods that brought together stakeholders from all over the globe to interpret the word “livelihoods” in light of the needs of adolescents, and to review recent findings from field-based interventions and the research methods necessary to bring to light the distinctive adolescent experience.

In the course of the workshop held at the Population Council in New York, April 7-8 2004, findings were presented on programmes directed to this age group that seek both to build traditional economic skills and to offer social support. Programmes reviewed in India, Kenya, and Egypt, for example, sought to increase the agency and decisionmaking power of young women by building social networks and securing access to safe spaces.

Data from South Africa were used to draw out the linkages between economic vulnerability and health behaviors in the context of the HIV epidemic. For girls, economic vulnerability has been found to increase the likelihood of exchanging sex for money or goods, experiencing coerced sex, and not using a condom at last sex. Participants grappled throughout the proceedings with the vast internal diversity of the adolescent experience requiring different programme approaches by age, sex, urban–rural setting, economic vigor of the economy, and stage of development.