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June 2004 Expanding Life and Work Options for Adolescents For nearly a decade, the Population Council has conducted research on the enormous potential of the world’s more than one billion young people (ages 15 to 24), the diversity of their needs, and the challenges they face in making the transition to adulthood, especially in the most impoverished communities of the developing world. The educational and livelihood options open to them—or lack thereof—will shape the future of this largest generation of youth and the future of our global society. The Population Council is focusing on interventions that can improve access to schooling and work opportunities. Researchers are evaluating programs designed to help adolescents emerge as healthy, informed adults with productive skills that will permit them to be full participants in work, family, and community life. The Council also is seeking to gauge whether expanded life options affect adolescent girls’ sexual initiation, marriage, childbearing, and overall health. The Council is studying 11 programs in nine countries that serve populations between the ages of 10 and 25. Total enrollment in these programs exceeds 20,000 young people, predominately girls. Activities range from vocational training workshops to sports activities and life-skills education (e.g., training in health and hygiene). Approaches being introduced in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, South Africa, Vietnam, and other countries are being assessed to determine the most viable, cost-effective options for improving opportunities for youth. Below are details about one such project, in Bangladesh. With a land area slightly larger than Greece, Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country on earth. Family planning policies initiated by the Bangladesh government in the 1970s helped reduce the average number of births per woman from 6.2 in the early 1970s to about 3.5 today. Nevertheless, during that period the population grew from 66 to over 138 million, propelled by “population momentum,” the tendency for a youth-heavy population to keep growing because of the sheer number of people entering their reproductive years. Eighty percent of Bangladesh’s future population growth is likely to result from population momentum; a five-year rise in women’s average age at first childbirth could avert 40 percent of that growth. Eighteen is the legal marriage age for girls in Bangladesh, yet 47 percent of young women marry before age 15. Council research on whether work opportunities for girls change marriage patterns* has indicated that paid employment, an option previously not available to many young women in Bangladesh, opens new possibilities beyond the traditional path of marriage and motherhood. In addition to delaying marriage, formal work allows women to build savings and expand their social skills. During the past three years, the Population Council has collaborated with two of Bangladesh’s most innovative service organizations on a pilot program to make savings plans, micro-credit, and life-skills training accessible to 18,000 girls in three of the country’s rural districts. On the basis of the Council findings, its partners in the study—the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and the Centre for Mass Education and Sciences (CMES)—plan to broaden the initiative to a national program for rural boys as well as girls and to add specific financial and business training skills to current program offerings. Council senior associate Sajeda Amin, who was the principal investigator for the pilot program, is enthusiastic about studying the expanded program. She explained: “As in the pilot, 30 girls and boys from a village will form a club. BRAC or CMES will conduct 30 to 40 sessions on general topics ranging from diet to negotiating the risks and constraints that poor youth face in their everyday lives. These sessions will be followed by 20 more sessions, developed during the pilot phase, that teach specific skills for getting jobs or running a small business. For example, if a member wants to produce pickles or sell quilts in the local market, she or he will learn basic cost-benefit analysis on how to assess potential markets, develop and implement a marketing plan, secure loans, and manage accounts.” Amin and her colleagues plan to follow the program over the long term, mapping the paths participants take, including the age at which they marry. * “Adolescent Girls’ Adventure: Baseline Survey Report on Rural Adolescents in Bangladesh,” a monograph by Sajeda Amin, Simeen Mahmud, and Lopita Huq, was published in 2001 by UNICEF and the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs. The study was funded by UNICEF-Dhaka, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the U.K. Department for International Development, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Sidebar: New opportunities for the most vulnerable girls See Also
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