OUR IMPACT
“A girl who is educated actively participates in the development of their area. They contribute brilliant ideas and constructive criticism in development meetings and discussions. They will not be afraid to speak out when they are being ill-treated.”
– Lekeleni Akimu, AGE Africa Alumna, Class of 2014
Statistics
- AGE Scholars delay marriage and pregnancy well beyond the national average – 91% of AGE Scholars have delayed pregnancy and marriage to past the age of 18 even though nationwide, Malawi has a 50% child marriage rate!
- AGE scholars are finishing secondary school – 96% of AGE Africa scholarship recipients finish all four years of secondary school.
- AGE scholars are improving their post-secondary transitions – 50% of AGE Scholars who finished school qualified for tertiary education.
- AGE scholars are leaders and role models. Nearly 90% of AGE Africa’s CHATS Girls’ Club participants feel they are a role model in their village, an increase from just 65% of girls who felt this way before participating in the program.
AGE Africa employs an intensive monitoring and evaluation strategy to continuously assess our impact against three overarching objectives:
- Improve secondary school completion rates
- Empower girls to become agents of change in their own lives
- Improve post-secondary transitions.
In 2015, AGE Africa partnered with the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, to conduct its first external assessment of our programs. The mid-term evaluation gave AGE Africa a clearer picture of how our CHATS Girls’ Club Program is changing the lives of the girls and how that impact compares to our scholarship program. The ICRW team also helped AGE Africa to significantly improve its M&E tools, processes, and strengthen its results framework. Please click to download AGE Africa’s results framework.
Quantitative and qualitative findings from the assessment found that girls showed significant improvements in public speaking, group facilitation, assertiveness (self-advocacy), and decision-making. Additionally, CHATS participants showed significant gains in sexual and reproductive health knowledge and school retention over time. AGE Africa is committed to conducting rigorous quantitative and qualitative analysis of our impact, and will work in the coming few years to continually revise our monitoring and evaluation strategy to better serve the needs of the organization and our girls. For a copy of the ICRW-UNGEI assessment of AGE Africa’s CHATS program, please click here.
Nearly 90% of AGE Africa students complete all four years of secondary education, compared to 6% of women nationwide
87% of AGE Africa’s recipients delay pregnancy and early marriage until 18+, compared to just 46% nationwide.
Almost 50% of our students qualify for higher education.
Portrait of the AGE Africa Student
96% are first-generation high school attendees.
42% walk 6+ km each way to school (with half of those walking 11+ km each way).
43% are single or double orphans.
The average beneficiary has 5.5 siblings.
