Community Engagement and Promoting Positive Masculinities to End Harmful Practices

Interventions: The intervention “Community Engagement and Promoting Positive Masculinities” is part of a package of activities under the Global Program to End Child Marriage (GPECM) and Joint Program on the Elimination of FGM. The intervention consists of two components taking place over 12-months:

o Community Engagement: This component includes a variety of activities to influence key actors and power holders at the community level – including community dialogues, working with religious leaders (workshops) – which are meant to lead to a consensus and public declaration against harmful practices. The public declaration is an agreement between key community members with a public ceremony declaring the community free of child marriage and FGM. Thereafter, a monitoring cell is set up to monitor community members at risk and follow-up cases to provide linkages to potential social and protection services. There is no set dosage of activities, rather communities progress at different paces, with implementing partners accompanying the progress and engaging at key junctures when there is community acceptance to progress on each topic.
o Positive masculinities: This component includes dedicated clubs for adolescent girls and boys aged 10 – 19 years old, meant to convey life skills, information on sexual and reproductive health (SRH), positive masculinities and topics related to harmful practices including child marriage, FGM and other forms violence against children. The club curriculum includes 32 to 36 hours of content and follow a semester approach (approximately two cohorts of around 30 girls and 30 boys per semester). Adolescents are considered to have completed the intervention if they attend a minimum of 32 contact hours.

2025-04-01

2026-04-01

o Girl child marriage (marriage or cohabitation before the age of 18 years)
o Female genital mutilation (FGM)
o Violence against children (measured as any physical punishment or psychological aggression from caregivers)
o Community-level norms on: a) gender equality, b) child marriage and c) FGM

o Knowledge of harmful effects and legality of child marriage and FGM
o Individual attitudes on: a) gender equality, b) child marriage and c) FGM
o Agency and willingness to act against harmful practices: a) Soft skills, b) agency, voice and self-confidence, c) aspirations, d) willingness to stand up against harmful practices
o Equality in gender roles: a) economic standing of adolescent girls, b) adolescent boys involvement in domestic and care work
o Linkages to and receipt of social services
o Conformity effects: Social sanctions and exclusion for not conforming to norms

The impact evaluation is designed as a stratified clustered RCT at the regional level, with two treatment conditions and one control condition assigned at village (community)-level.

o Treatment 1: community engagement component;
o Treatment 2: community engagement + positive masculinity components
o Control group: Communities that are waitlisted for the program, however, receive other services or assistance as per usual protocols (‘business as usual’).

Villages were selected taking the universe of rural villages in two target regions, the Central South and Central North which were secure (accessible in terms of ongoing conflict at the planning stage), had not yet benefited from the intervention (or a similar intervention) and where the majority of inhabitants spoke one of three primary dominant languages. Villages within 3 km distance from each other were excluded. Assignment to the three study arms was one in equal proportions (50 villages to each group). Within each village, study participants study include caregivers (adult men and women) of young girls of ages 0 – 4 years old (at risk for FGM), as well as adolescent girls and boys aged 12 – 17 years old who are unmarried at the time of the recruitment (at risk for future early marriage transitions). Households were recruited for the study using a listing census starting at the village center, where meetings typically take place and proceeding outwards until the radius of 1.5 km was reached. Households were only recruited into the study if they had one of the key target groups and spoke one of the three dominant languages. A baseline is planned for February – March 2025 and a longitudinal follow-up of the same households for August – September 2026 (approximately 18 months later, or 6-months post-intervention).

Not available

Randomization will be conducted by a computer and, if possible, for transparency in the presence of key stakeholders, including key staff members from UNICEF and UNFPA, the government, and implementing partners.

Villages

Yes

150 villages

7,500 households (at baseline)

50 villages (T1), 50 villages (T2), 50 villages (control)

Our total baseline sample size is 50 households across 150 villages, or 7,500 participant households. To determine the required sample size, we use the 2021 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey, focusing on the central-northern region. We run power analysis for each of the child marriage and FGM target groups separately, assuming a significance level of 5% (two-tailed) and statistical power of 80%. Further, we use 40 communities per study arm for calculations, to absorb risk of dropping up to 10 communities per arm due to conflict-related intervention disruption or inaccessibility. With randomization at the community level and assuming attrition of 45% at the household level (approximately 30% per year), to accommodate both mobility of host populations, as well as internally displaced households. Power analysis suggests that to detect a 12 percentage points (pp) decrease in the prevalence of child marriage, we need to survey 2,040 households (17 x 120 = 2,040 each with an unmarried adolescent girl aged 12 – 17). Further, to detect a 5 pp reduction in the prevalence of FGM, we need to survey 2,880 households (24 x 120 = 2,880 with at least one girl aged 0-4 years). This implies an unadjusted sample size of 4,920 (2,040 + 2,880). However, due to the estimated overlap in households falling into both target categories, the total sample size can be reduced by a factor of 0.84 (=1-0.16), resulting in a total required sample size of 4,133. Finally, taking into account attrition, this figure increases to ~6,000 households (or 50 households per village). We do not consider take-up in our calculations, as the community engagement treatment is designed to change outcomes on average in the community. Thus, we consider that all households living in communities with intervention activities will be reached at some level. Finally considering the additional 10 communities per arm, our total sample size requirement is approximately 50 households per community x 150 = 7,500 at baseline.