Introduction

The Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) was implemented between 2008-15 by the World Bank in eight countries in partnership with the Nike Foundation and the governments of Afghanistan, Australia, Denmark, Jordan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Liberia, Nepal, Norway, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The initiative was designed to better understand what works in helping adolescent girls and young women transition to productive employment. The AGI piloted and rigorously evaluated innovative interventions that could be scaled up or replicated if they were found to be successful. Interventions included business development skills training, technical and vocational training targeting skills in high demand, and life skills training. The initiative has generated some of the strongest evidence to-date on the impact of employment programs for young women. The AGI pilot implementation experience has also generated valuable operational lessons on how projects can achieve employment impacts. Operational lessons are shared in this Resource Guide.

The initiative was piloted in eight countries: Afghanistan, Haiti, Jordan, Lao PDR, Liberia, Nepal, Rwanda, and South Sudan.

How to Use This Guide

The AGI Resource Guide features lessons and resources that the AGI developed and were found (based on experience) to be very useful in practice. The guide is designed for staff in government line ministries who are working on youth skills training and practitioners and World Bank teams that are supervising these projects. AGI resources and lessons are intended to help make skills training programs more inclusive of and effective for young women.

The AGI Resource Guide is organized in four modules that follow the project cycle and that can be explored according to the user's learning needs. The welcome video explains how to use the guide. The resources and tools included in the modules are meant to provide project teams with examples that can be adapted and replicated as appropriate.

Resource icon AGI Resources include: assessments and reports, guidelines and guidance notes, curricula and manuals.

Tool icon AGI Tools include: terms of reference, contract templates and monitoring and evaluation tools.