Empowerment is a difficult concept to communicate, especially across cultures. It is a process and an outcome; it is personal and political; and the feeling of "being empowered" can look completely different from person to person. Save the Children Canada (SCC) is currently implementing education projects for crisis-affected girls and boys aged 5 to 18 in Colombia, DRC, and Nigeria, with funding from Global Affairs Canada. To contribute to global evidence on girls' education in crisis-affected contexts and girls' empowerment, SCC is implementing a Learning Agenda. This Learning Agenda puts our innovative Girls' Power Index at the centre, assessing girls' empowerment across a range of domains through focus group discussions and surveys. These findings have led to the development of a report, "Girls' Voices on Empowerment," which helps shapes our understanding of and approaches to SBCC programming on girls' empowerment and to explore the barriers and enablers within girls' education programs, as well as centering the voices of girls and contributing to girl-led advocacy. Findings validate that many girls understand the importance of education for their personal growth, success, and independence. Most identified a considerable number of contextual, socio-cultural, and economic barriers that hindered their education. The report provides a platform for understanding how the pandemic is affecting girls' empowerment and how we can adapt SBCC programming to meet those needs, such as transforming parental attitudes towards early marriage and teacher's attitudes toward positive discipline.  
 

Many children are struggling to master basic skills in reading and math despite a dramatic rise in school enrollment around the world. For instance, India's 2018 Annual Status of Education Report found that only about half of all grade 5 students in rural India could read a grade 2 text. Assessments showed similar results in other countries, from Malawi to Nicaragua to Zambia, and Covid-related school closures have only worsened this problem.


Especially in low- and middle-income countries, poor health is often a key barrier that students must overcome in order to be able to learn. The health of schoolchildren may fall through the cracks of government systems in which education departments focus on pedagogy and school infrastructure, while health departments focus on health workers and medical infrastructure. Improving the coordination between health and education systems could address this gap. School-based health interventions have been effective at increasing learning outcomes, and many can be delivered at a low cost, although the relative cost-effectiveness varies depending on the specific approach and context. 


Results from eight randomized evaluations in Burkina Faso, China, Kenya, and the United States show that health interventions delivered at schools can improve student health and positively affect learning outcomes. This presentation will deliver an overview of these interventions, highlighting cases where they were effective and ineffective at improving both health and learning, as well as potential lessons for scalability. 

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) partners with governments to foster economic growth through targeted investments in infrastructure, land reform, health, agriculture, and education, among other sectors. Recognizing the importance of social and behavior change (SBC) to an investment's success, MCC's Human and Community Development Practice applies a standard social and behavior change model to contribute to the design phase of MCC investments. In Morocco, MCC applied this model to identify individual and structural factors influencing the application of student-centered (SLC) practices by secondary school teachers who may participate in a planning teacher training program. This presentation describes the research approach applied to identify which factors were most strongly associated with the desired behavior and how these findings strengthen the content of the teacher training program. Findings suggest that a majority of secondary school teachers in Morocco do not apply SCL practices in the classroom. Two sub-constructs from the MCC SBC Model, Perceived Relevance and Habit, were significantly associated with the desired behavior. Perceived Relevance of SCL practices was positively associated while Habit was negatively associated with their application by individual teachers. While qualitative data suggested awareness and positive attitudes were high among teachers, respondents indicated that lack of student motivation and ability, support from inspectors and parents, availability of equipment and technology, class size, and classroom physical environment were also important factors influencing teachers' application of SCL practices.

Violence in schools is a long-standing, global issue. The banning of corporal punishment and conventional information-sharing approaches have had little impact on reducing it. SBC, relatively new to the education sector, has the potential to be more effective. 
Save the Children has developed and piloted 'Commitments' - an SBC approach, using Cialdini's 'Influence Principles' and 'Emotional Drivers' - to challenge harmful teacher behaviours and norms, focusing on humiliating language, corporal punishment and sexual abuse. Two interventions were tested: a school-based teacher workshop model consisting of eight 40 minute reflections sessions; and a 6 month, online peer chat group, 'Everyday Heroes', housed on WhatsApp, where project administrators posted community testimony and 'conversation starters' to stimulate discussion. 
 The Center on Gender Equity and Health at University of California, San Diego provided technical assistance to Ugandan research partner, The Applied Research Burea, to monitor project implementation and adaptations due to COVID 19, and to conduct an evaluation. 
Whilst the endline survey was severely hampered by school closures as a result of COVID-19, (10% retention), data gathered through the evaluation did reveal that both the school-based workshops and the online chat groups have the potentional to shift teacher norms and behaviours in school. The pilot provides concrete recommendations on how to implement SBC education initiatives in ways that are feasible, acceptable and effective among teachers to shift norms around teachers' use of violence in their relations with students.