Adolescent Girls’ Education in Crisis Initiative (AGENCI)

• In Event: Bridging the Gap: The link between theoretical frameworks and their practical implementation in education programming

Proposal

Development and humanitarian frameworks, such as triple nexus development, gender-responsive approaches, transformative education, and decolonization, exist to explain complex social phenomena, economic relations, and promote positive change. However, their integration, application, and overall usefulness in practice is not always guaranteed, with application rarely linear, oftentimes intersecting, and subject to interpretive processes. As a result, they often remain theoretical and are applied inconsistently. By witnessing how these abstract frameworks are adapted in practice in low- and middle-income settings, we can document their fluidity.
The Adolescent Girls’ Education in Crisis Initiative (AGENCI), funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and jointly implemented by Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and local partners[1], aims to empower adolescent girls and female youth (AGFY) pursuing education pathways in crisis-affected areas of South Sudan, Syria, and Uganda. AGENCI’s conception and design is informed by frameworks like the above, which offer conceptual and operational guidelines, but also undergo a process of modification and reconstruction to capture intersections in practice and drive progress towards results. Using examples of specific components and interventions from AGENCI’s three countries of operation (Syria, South Sudan, Uganda), our presentation seeks to examine how these frameworks have been applied; highlight successes, challenges, and tensions when doing so; and provide operational guidance and recommendations to others working on similar education programming:
● Driving teaching quality through Gender-Responsive Pedagogy (GRP) and Values-Based Education (VBE): colleagues from Uganda will illustrate how AGENCI has applied gender-responsive approaches and transformative education frameworks to create safe, quality, and inclusive learning environments that empower teachers and AGFY through strengths-based GRP and VBE models;
● Promoting locally-owned and locally-driven initiatives through human-centered design (HCD) and flexible response funds (FRF): colleagues from Syria and Uganda will discuss how AGENCI has shifted decision-making and program design to the communities in which the project seeks to serve through processes that recognize the unique needs and realities of each context through locally-led, participatory design, and allows AGFY, community members, and educational stakeholders to identify specific barriers and educational needs, determine solutions, and drive innovation;
● Promoting social behaviour change through combined life skills and community engagement: colleagues from South Sudan will show how AGENCI has used life skills and community engagement to challenge and transform structural barriers, social norms, attitudes, and power relations that restrict AGFYs’ access to education, promote gender equality, peace and protection, meet the needs of local contexts, and remain adaptive in approach.
Through these case studies, AGENCI teams will highlight how global frameworks are applied in practice in differentiated ways to achieve more sustainable and inclusive education outcomes. By reconstructing these frameworks in contextually-specific ways, other organizations and projects have the opportunity to adapt or replicate these approaches to bring about positive change across diverse contexts, empower marginalized groups, promote gender equality, foster inclusive practices, and drive sustainable transformations in education.

Author

• Lucy R Philpott, World University Service of Canada