I am a co-PI on an ongoing evaluation of a cluster-RCT of two interventions that were virtually-delivered during covid-19-related school closures in Bangladesh: (1) a gender-neutral Growth Mindset (GM) programming around malleable intelligence and (2) Girl Rising (GR) programming that focuses on gender norms around girls’ education that is layered on top of the GM programming. We layer GR on GM in order to test whether programming that speaks particularly to the constrains faced by adolescent girls has additional positive impacts on adolescent outcomes. We are currently evaluating their impact on re-enrollment in secondary school, learning loss, cycle completion, engagement in paid work, and exposure to early marriage, and other outcomes of interest.
I am a quantitative researcher with the GAGE programme and co-PI on ongoing data collection activities in Bangladesh. GAGE is a nine-year longitudinal data collection program following 18,000 adolescents across low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) in Africa (Ethiopia and Rwanda), South Asia (Bangladesh and Nepal), and the Middle East (Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan).
In Bangladesh, we have undertaken data collection with adolescents in Dhaka, with Rohingya adolescents refugee camps and Bangladeshi adolescents in host communities in Cox's Bazar, and with school-going adolescents in Chittagong and Sylhet. The ongoing work in Cox's Bazar is part of the Cox's Bazar Panel Survey (CBPS), in partnership with the Yale Macmillan Center Program on Refugees and The World Bank . Longitudinal data collection with school-going adolescents in Chittagong and Sylhet is linked to the ongoing aforementioned impact evaluation.
Connect is a BMGF-funded project led by Save the Children, which aims to develop light-touch interventions to increase uptake of modern contraceptive methods among first time parents, particularly young and adolescent moths, in Tanzania and Bangladesh. I am a co-PI on the evaluation of these interventions. In 2019 and 2020, we engaged in small scale testing and pilot data collection around proposed interventions, and in 2022 and 2023, we will scale-up and evaluate these interventions in both settings.