Booth: 36

SKY Girls is an innovative social marketing programme for adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After launching in Botswana in 2014 with a tobacco prevention focus, it has since been scaled to Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria, and has taken on new issues such as SRHR, FSP, and gender equality.

The programme is based on the core insight that adolescent girls prioritise short-term social risks and rewards over health or other long-term outcomes. Using this insight, SKY Girls first builds an aspirational and engaging brand to draw in a large audience, then amplifies the real voices of girls saying ‘yes’ to the desired behaviour.

SKY Girls uses mass media channels such as TV shows, movies, magazines, radio and social media, with content localised for each country using audience-led feedback loops. It also engages girls at community level through schools and physical activations.

Awareness of SKY among the target audience is above 90% in most intervention areas, and attitudinal and behavioural results support the effectiveness of the strategy. SKY Girls has been assessed as cost-effective by World Health Organization standards, with an average cost of $7.25 per girl reached with impact.