POPULATION Council policy analyst Judith Bruce was among the first to argue that adolescent girls ARE central to the world’s social, health, and economic development.

In the mid-1990s, many in the development community were skeptical. But a decade and a half later, because of Judith and others like her, we have a clearer picture of the potential of girl-centered policies to reach hundreds of millions of girls at risk of forced marriage, in the path of the HIV epidemic, and under daily threat to their safety.

This year’s annual report focuses on the Population Council’s work to improve policies and programs for the poorest girls in the poorest communities so that they may lead themselves and their communities out of poverty. Fifteen years ago, Judith wrote, “Global thinkers are puzzled, looking for points of reference and leverage to understand and shape the future. They identify power elites and influential individuals. Appearing on none of these power lists is one of the potentially most influential figures in the developing world: the 12-year-old girl. . . . In the next few years, this 12-year-old girl will either abandon or continue her schooling, be pushed into marriage and childbearing, or develop a sense of proud ownership of her physical self and make independent decisions about her lifetime partner. She will either struggle in poverty or find a socially productive livelihood, submit to a faceless life or thrive as an individual, making her contribution to the world. As her future is reconfigured, so is ours.”

The Uncharted Passage—the landmark 1998 book Judith coauthored with Council researcher Barbara Mensch and Center for Health and Gender Equity researcher Margaret Greene—helped transform thinking about the social, health, and economic dimensions of girls’ lives. It inspired our partners as well as the next generation of Population Council researchers like Annabel Erulkar, K.G. Santhya, and Karen Austrian. They are leading projects in Ethiopia, India, and Zambia to design and evaluate programs that give girls the knowledge, skills, and social connections they need to thrive and to give policymakers research results they can use to improve programs and efficiently allocate resources.

What were epiphanies in 1998—engage girls before puberty; reach out-of-school girls; and give girls the skills, knowledge, and I.D. cards they need to protect themselves—are now conventional wisdom. In Rwanda, the Council laid the foundation for the government’s commitment to a national program to reach all girls by age 12 with mentors, safe places to gather with friends, and information about health and money management. In Ethiopia, the Council’s research helped reframe national health policy by expanding programs that address child marriage and support married girls and extremely isolated young girls, many of whom are migrants in domestic service in Ethiopia’s towns and cities. Our portfolio of research represents a groundbreaking global effort to improve programs and policies for girls as a core development strategy.

In this year’s report, Council vice president Ann Blanc writes about rigorous program evaluation as the cornerstone of our work with adolescent girls. Applying science to address global challenges—identifying problems, creating and testing strategies, evaluating their impact, and using our findings to refine and improve programs—is how the Council has led the way for sixty years. With this approach, we deliver solutions that improve lives around the world.

Our work to document the lives of girls, give them a say in their own lives, and learn what will put them on the path to healthy, productive adulthood would not be possible without the steadfast involvement and enthusiasm of our donors, partners, and trustees. We are deeply grateful for your generosity. With your support, we look forward to continuing to help women, men, and children around the world lead lives of satisfaction and purpose.

We believe that if we improve girls’ health, keep them safe and in school, and give them critical information, a say in their own lives, and a strong network of support, they will prosper. Our beliefs are based on rigorous scientific analysis of interventions the Council and others have conducted to help girls lead more productive lives.

When girls stay in school, they gain skills and knowledge, avoid the disadvantages of early childbearing, and have more earning power. A World Bank study has shown that excluding adolescent girls from school, community participation, and meaningful livelihoods has a substantial negative impact on economic growth.

The Population Council is at the forefront of research, policy analysis, and program design for adolescent girls in the developing world. We have conducted research that identifies which girls are the most vulnerable and where they are geographically concentrated. We have illuminated the scope and negative impact of child marriage. We have shown that programs often don’t reach the most vulnerable girls. And we have demonstrated that it is crucial to reach girls early, before irreversible events anchor them in poverty and poor health.

Our experience shows that when we give girls mentoring, life skills, social support, financial literacy, and educational opportunities, we can measurably improve their lives and the lives of their children. We have demonstrated that we can reduce child marriage in rural Ethiopia. We have evaluated ways to help girls learn about budgeting and begin to save in financial institutions in Kenya and Uganda. We have studied how to improve girls’ literacy and support their return to school through second-chance programs for girls in rural Upper Egypt. And we have designed programs to support girls’ transition from primary to secondary school in the Guatemalan highlands.

The development community is eager to expand programs for adolescent girls, but limited data exist on what strategies work best. Now is the time to invest in providing rigorous evidence on the most effective and cost-effective approaches. So the Population Council is expanding many of the successful initiatives we have developed for adolescent girls and rigorously testing them to assess their impact.

Today, we are building the world’s largest body of research evaluating programs to improve the lives of adolescent girls. More than 42,000 girls in seven countries—Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Tanzania, and Zambia—are (or soon will be) participating in randomized, controlled trials, the gold standard of research. These studies compare groups of girls who participate in programs that have varying components with girls who are not participating in any program. Comparing the groups in this way allows us to know when improvements in girls’ lives are the result of a program component and when the improvements would have happened on their own.

These studies are underway; results are not yet available. We have promising results from a number of quasi-experimental studies. An example is our effort to reduce child marriage. In Ethiopia, the Population Council’s Berhane Hewan project provided unmarried adolescent girls with community awareness-building, school supplies, livestock, and mentors and supported married girls with information about reproductive health and family planning. An evaluation found that girls aged 10–14 who participated in the program were 90 percent less likely to be married at the end of the program than girls who did not, and three times more likely to be in school. Married girls in the program were three times more likely to be using family planning methods compared to other married girls. The work led to greater attention to early marriage and increased investment in initiatives to delay marriage and support girls who are already married. We decided to delve deeper and determine which component of the program was most critical to its success. So we recently launched an expanded investigation in Ethiopia and other countries to determine the most effective elements of this approach.

We will find out which programs—and which of their key elements—do the most to help girls stay in school and avoid unwanted sex, child marriage, early and unintended pregnancy, HIV and STI infection, and gender-based violence. These studies will allow us to discover what knowledge and skills given to a girl make the biggest difference in the life of the woman she becomes.

Robust program evaluation takes time. Getting solid answers will take years, not months. But by pursuing the evidence, we will identify best practices, refine the critical elements of girl-centered programs, and eliminate ineffective approaches.

A few years from now, we will have an even richer trove of evidence that we and others will use to improve and advance girl-centered programs. As we always have, we will share information with governments, advocates, policymakers, researchers, nongovernmental organizations, and community organizations about what works to empower girls, help them gain an education and cultivate savings, and improve their sexual and reproductive health. With this knowledge, we can build local capacity to expand and deliver these programs to vulnerable adolescent girls.

We will continue to pursue the evidence and change the expectations of policymakers, communities, families, and girls themselves about girls’ potential.