With the pioneering support of NoVo Foundation, the Karama Initiative for Adolescent Girls sought to explore how girls in Africa and the Arab region could develop and exercise leadership so they could take action on their own behalf. In order to do that, the work needed bridge generational divides and build a foundational trust between everyone involved.

Karama worked with partners in 12 countries in Africa and the Arab region, and in the process trained a new generation of young women who would lead the work of the initiative.

The initiative needed a specialized approach because work aimed specifically at adolescent girls has traditionally been rare. Adolescent girls have have typically been addressed only through programs for women, girls, or children. These approaches have not recognized that adolescence is a unique and pivotal stage for girls. There is also insufficient research on adolescent girls in the Arab region and Africa – including research specifically on their lived experiences, rather than on broader issues such as schooling, marriage, or fertility.

Compounding these gaps are cultural norms across the region that encourage adolescent girls to conform and discourage them from sharing their internal experience, while families restrict their autonomy and freedom.

These conditions have left adolescent girls unheard by their families, communities, and governments.

The young women who led and implemented the Karama Initiative for Adolescent Girls took intersectional, innovative, and sensitive approaches to establishing safe spaces in which adolescent girls could express themselves, and in which our partners could learn from and better understand the girls and their needs.

Their work has sought out and included girls from hard to reach communities - girls in rural areas; ethnic or religious minorities; girls with disabilities; girls from deprived backgrounds; displaced and refugee girls; girls living in conflict-affected areas or under occupation. Together, they have participated in programs that have included theatre and arts workshops, summer camps, and support sessions.

The girls who took part expressed that they wanted to raise awareness of their collective needs and potential interventions to address their priorities. They identified avenues for strengthening girls’ sense of themselves as agents of social change and members of a broad, collective peer group. They made clear that they wanted to explore new approaches for organizing girls’ activism in healthy, sustainable, and truly responsive ways.

Girls wanted to end the isolation many expressed they and their peers experience. They want to connect to the wider world, which they recognized as a way for them to claim and magnify their power.

This work has honed Karama’s approach to working with adolescent girls, and with those priorities identified by the girls themselves, culminated in the launch of the Wa’ed network. This will now be the vehicle through which adolescent girls in the region can set out to achieve those goals.