What Makes The AO Program Highly Participatory?

5.3. AO: management meets participatory development

An examination of AO reveals five characteristics that make the program highly participatory. First, one of the program’s initial steps is to identify and engage key community members. AO program staff draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that is presented to a community Assembly and must be signed by local leaders before program activities can begin. The MOU “establishes the community’s responsibility to find and make available spaces for girls to use free of charge” (Catino et al., 2012: 43). According to Girls Not Bride’s assessment of the AO program,

[h]aving local leaders buy-in to the programme and be champions for girls in their own communities is key to the sustainability

Swell-Menon and Bruce (2012: p.12) note that “some girls absorb the skills to teach others, including other members of the community and their families. The newly trained girls and community members become leaders and mentors, expanding the base of service deliverers.” This dynamic of peer-to-peer mentoring foments an “intergenerational process” that builds local capacity and creates “longer-term social infrastructure at the community level” (Swell-Menon and Bruce, 2012: v). Similarly, the mentoring structure empowers other community members to challenge local norms that infringe on girls’ and women’s rights. The fact that this process is organic, instead of being imposed by outsiders, also contributes to the sustainability of the AO program beyond the involvement of the

For instance, the AO program recognizes that “it is not realistic to expect a 100% participation rate from all the girls in the community because of time constraints, household responsibilities, health conditions, and so forth” (Sewall-Menon and Bruce, 2012: p.13). AO expects the girls to participate on average 77% of the time, as program reviews have revealed that a minimum of three-quarters of the programmatic dose will provide participants with the necessary skills to achieve positive program outcomes (Sewall-Menon and Bruce,