It’s not often that a team gets to debut a project that they’ve been working on since the day their organization was founded. In those early days, visions are painted and plans are made, and you certainly hope that those come to fruition, but you imagine there will be plenty of changes along the way. But on July 30th, the AMPLIFY Girls network and our partner organizations across Africa did what we set out to do more than seven years ago. We launched girlsagencyportal.org – home of the groundbreaking Adolescent Girls Agency Survey.
When the AMPLIFY Girls network first came together over seven years ago in a hotel meeting room in Rwanda, a room full of 17 locally-led, girl-focused organizations agreed on an idea. Community-driven organizations (CDOs) were creating impact for girls, but too often, that impact was dismissed by funders and stakeholders as being unproven and too small. CDOs needed a way to show their efficacy on their own terms, using a tool they created, in pursuit of an outcome they identified. And with that conversation, the journey toward the Adolescent Girls Agency Survey (or AGAS) began.
Agency, as you might suspect, was the target outcome identified by that room of partners in Rwanda years ago. Today, thanks to the help of AMPLIFY Girls, Girls Agency Lab Consulting, and dozens of African organizational leaders (including a number of Imago Dei Fund partners!), the AGAS has gone through a significant evolution and is now validated as a way to show the change in a girl’s agency when she participates in a program. It is the first agency-related tool created with African leaders for use in an African context, and now, with the launch of girlsagencyportal.org, that tool is available to the world.
The Portal provides an opportunity for girl-focused organizations to measure their impact in a unique way, but it is also much more than a place to find the AGAS. As organizations sign up for the Portal and begin using the survey, the Portal stores survey responses anonymously and acts as a repository of girls’ agency data. As more organizations use the Portal, the data will start to tell a story, and we can all learn more about what is most effective in girls’ agency programming. Does program length matter? Are there certain topics within a program that seem to be connected to better agency scores? Are there certain geographic areas with unique agency scores, and why? By offering the Portal for free, we can all participate in the compilation of information and the pursuit of learning that can make girls’ lives better.
Of course, there has been plenty of unique learning already in the past seven years, and a number of Imago Dei Fund partners have been at the core of that learning! Seven organizations (The Action Foundation, Akili Dada, Dandelion Africa, GLAMI, Girl Up Initiative Uganda, Our Sisters Opportunity, and TICAH) have been co-creators of the AGAS and the Portal while working with both AMPLIFY Girls and Imago Dei Fund. These partners have played unique roles in not just developing these resources, but also developing our understanding of girls’ agency more broadly.
For example, The Action Foundation, which works closely with children with disabilities and their caregivers in Kenya, has provided key insights into the process of measuring “agency” when its meaning might be differently understood by girls with disabilities. The Action Foundation team hosted AMPLIFY Girls and Girls Agency Lab Consulting in August 2024 for a series of focus group discussions on this topic – which is how we were able to learn that, depending on the disability that a girl has, the AGAS may need further adaptations before it is truly suitable and effective for every girl in every population.
Dandelion Africa, GLAMI, and Girl Up Initiative Uganda were all represented in that Rwanda hotel room and shaped the conversations that identified girls’ agency as the outcome that would drive this whole project. Other organizations, like Akili Dada, Our Sisters Opportunity, and TICAH, joined the AMPLIFY Girls network in 2023 specifically because of their interest in piloting the AGAS and helping to improve the tool’s accuracy by working to collect feedback from girls in their own communities – feedback that would improve the tool immeasurably.
We highlight these organizations and their contributions to our learning around girls’ agency not just to recognize their efforts, but to emphasize a unique truth at the heart of this new resource: it was truly co-created by local leaders over many years and it is better off because of that fact. We hope that their involvement in the creation process is only the beginning of local leaders engaging with these tools. Having girlsagencyportal.org available for community-driven organizations gives the development sector the chance to “hear” from local actors whose insights and program designs can be recorded through the Portal. As those insights become part of trends in the data, and those trends become larger, documented promising practices, the instincts of one local leader become part of a much bigger, louder, and more visible message: community-driven organizations know what works for girls, and with the right tools in-hand, they can and should be centered as the key to better evidence generation.
The launch of the Adolescent Girls Agency Survey and its online home is an ongoing event. But, it is worth noting that in the first ten days following the launch, girlsagencyportal.org gained nearly 150 participating organizations from nearly 20 countries. With that show of interest is also an indication that our shared journey toward better learning and better proof of impact has reached an exciting stage: one that brings together actors from all over in the name of better outcomes for girls and respect for the organizations that support them.
We encourage any interested organization to explore the Portal today. You can request access in a matter of minutes and get started using the AGAS in just a few days. The Portal is open! We look forward to making the most of it, together.
