icon icon icon icon icon icon icon

Girl-led Social Norms Shifting Activities

This brief provides an overview and examples of the key components of effective social norms shifting activities led by girls.

Download (English) Download (French)

Adolescence is a time of transition from childhood to adulthood. Gender and social norms restrict girls from occupying spaces outside the home, but centering their voice, priorities and participation can strengthen their leadership skills to come together and collectively shift norms towards greater equality of the project’s objectives: build girls’ individual and collective agency and shift unequal social norms, both of which are integral to comprehensive impact across sectors that support adolescent empowerment.

Girl led programming

The traditional way of addressing a behavior includes a communication strategy with activities targeting individual behavior change. Most of these activities are planned and led by the program staff with community consultations, investing in community members, and enhancing their knowledge and skills. A girl-led approach is not about a training or knowledge transfer but more about planning and executing activities based on issues they prioritize, supported by a mentorship process. It can build girls’ confidence in managing and leading interventions as well as taking up public spaces with visibility. As the girls have lived experience of the community’s social milieu, they can be mindful of risks and can plan for an assessment and mitigation of backlash in advance. The following components can be considered to support girl-led social norms programming: trust, mentorship, planning and decision-making, risk mitigation, and structured allyship.

Related Reports

Farmer Field and Business School Toolkit – Livestock Edition

The Farmer Field and Business School (FFBS), an approach originally developed under CARE’s Pathways to Empowerment program, focuses on improving rural, small-scale women farmers’ productivity and profitability by empowering women to more fully engage in equitable agriculture systems, using an integrated, gender-transformative, market-based and nutrition sensitive extension approach. This toolkit provides guidance on implementing FFBS in programs with a specific focus on livestock value chains. Read More

Read More

Farmer Field and Business School Toolkit – Second Edition

The Farmer Field and Business School (FFBS), an approach originally developed under CARE’s Pathways to Empowerment program, focuses on improving rural, small-scale women farmers’ productivity and profitability by empowering women to more fully engage in equitable agriculture systems, using an integrated, gender-transformative, market-based and nutrition sensitive extension approach. The Scaling Up FFBS Globally program, funded by the Sall Family Foundation, now influences over twenty global programs spanning over 30 countries, and aims to reach 25 million producers by 2027. Read More

Read More

Tipping Point Influence: Influencing USAID’s Child Marriage Strategy

This brief provides a top-line overview of the process undertaken by CARE to influence government strategy so this included a heightened focus on social norms change in child marriage programming. Read More

Read More