Leveraging Technology to Expand Agency and 21st Century Skills: Scaling the Binti Shupavu Program for Secondary School Girls

• In Event: Empowering students through technology: leadership, agency, and global connections

Proposal

School-based girls' clubs have gained recognition as a promising practice for addressing the specific challenges faced by girls in educational settings. A growing body of evidence supports their effectiveness in promoting girls' retention and academic achievement. For instance, a systematic review by Marcus et al. of 44 girls/youth club programs, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, found that the vast majority positively impacted girls' social-emotional competencies, including self-confidence and decision-making. Furthermore, a significant proportion of these programs (25%) demonstrated a positive correlation with increased school enrollment, attainment, and reduced dropout rates.
The Binti Shupavu program exemplifies the potential of such interventions. As an after-school initiative, it provides adolescent girls with essential skills and support systems, empowering them to thrive academically and beyond. Building on over a decade of experience and positive outcomes in Tanzania, a group of locally-based organizations is working together to scale the program to Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.
This expansion leverages technology and online platforms as key drivers for program adaptation and implementation across diverse contexts. This approach facilitates:
• Cross-country training and mentorship for program facilitators: Utilizing online platforms to deliver training, share best practices, and provide ongoing mentorship ensures program fidelity and facilitator capacity building across geographical distances.
• Curriculum adaptation: Technology enables the adaptation of the Binti Shupavu curriculum to meet the specific cultural and contextual needs of girls in each country, ensuring relevance and maximizing impact.
• Ongoing support and resource provision: Online platforms provide a sustainable mechanism for delivering ongoing support, resources, and updates to program implementors, ensuring program quality and sustainability.
While the link between girls' club programming and positive SEL outcomes is well-documented, the specific mechanisms these skills translate into improved educational outcomes require further investigation. This collaborative aims to address this gap by examining the causal pathways between SEL development, 21st-century skill acquisition, and academic outcomes within the expanded Binti Shupavu program.
Preliminary data from the expanded program suggests promising results, mirroring the positive outcomes observed in Tanzania. Participants demonstrate improvements in self-efficacy, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking skills – key indicators of 21st-century skill development. This underscores the transformative potential of technology in scaling impactful educational interventions and emphasizes the importance of equipping girls with agency and 21st-century skills to thrive in an increasingly digital world.
This paper will share preliminary findings of the impact of the expansion of the Binti Shupavu program in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, a successful school-based girls' club model initially implemented in Tanzania, highlighting the innovative use of technology in scaling its impact. Recognizing the critical role of such programs in fostering social-emotional learning and improving educational outcomes for vulnerable girls to new contexts.

Authors

• Devotha Festo Mlay, Daring Girls

• Jessica Love, Daring Girls