The Youth Empowerment Program was implemented by Save the Children with funding from Bulgari. The program combined training in soft skills and technical skills with sex education, mentoring, and job-finding assistance. The program started in September 2019, and ran for about four months in the form of 4-hour weekly meetings. Most activities were completed by March 2020 when a strict lockdown was implemented in these cities. Diego (our guest blogger), Selim Gulesci from Trinity College Dublin, and Manuela Puentes Beccar from Bocconi University partnered with Save the Children to evaluate the program. The evaluation is a randomized control trial with 600 vulnerable girls and boys aged 15-18 who applied to the program in four cities in Bolivia, a random half of them assigned into the program.
The baseline survey consisted of face-to-face in-depth interviews conducted in 2019 before the program began. Violence in the survey can be classified into 3 categories; physical, psychological, and sexual. The baseline data document a high level of violence experienced by both boys and girls. Over half (55%) of these youth reported having ever experienced some type of violence and there are no statistical differences in violence between treatment and control groups. Such high levels of violence are consistent with other data from Bolivia. The survey does not deconstruct the source of violence, specifically intrahousehold versus, for example, violence at schools (including bullying). Boys are more likely to report being the victims of violence than girls (57% and 53% respectively), with especially higher levels of psychological violence, but with lower levels of sexual violence than girls.
The Youth Empowerment Program was implemented by Save the Children with funding from Bulgari. The program combined training in soft skills and technical skills with sex education, mentoring, and job-finding assistance. The program started in September 2019, and ran for about four months in the form of 4-hour weekly meetings. Most activities were completed by March 2020 when a strict lockdown was implemented in these cities. Diego (our guest blogger), Selim Gulesci from Trinity College Dublin, and Manuela Puentes Beccar from Bocconi University partnered with Save the Children to evaluate the program. The evaluation is a randomized control trial with 600 vulnerable girls and boys aged 15-18 who applied to the program in four cities in Bolivia, a random half of them assigned into the program.
The baseline survey consisted of face-to-face in-depth interviews conducted in 2019 before the program began. Violence in the survey can be classified into 3 categories; physical, psychological, and sexual. The baseline data document a high level of violence experienced by both boys and girls. Over half (55%) of these youth reported having ever experienced some type of violence and there are no statistical differences in violence between treatment and control groups. Such high levels of violence are consistent with other data from Bolivia. The survey does not deconstruct the source of violence, specifically intrahousehold versus, for example, violence at schools (including bullying). Boys are more likely to report being the victims of violence than girls (57% and 53% respectively), with especially higher levels of psychological violence, but with lower levels of sexual violence than girls.