Learning vision

Although there is a good understanding of the diverse drivers of child marriage, the evidence and experience base on what works in these different situations is not as strong as we would like (and need!) it to be. Working towards gender equality and norms change therefore calls for participatory and gender transformative monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning. The More Than Brides Alliance facilitates learning in the following ways:

  • Enabling cross-country thematic and strategic learning.
  • Building/capturing evidence for policy and social norms change advocacy and campaigning.
  • Supporting mutual capacity-building to shift power and decision-making to the lowest operational level.
  • Fostering innovation through social innovation labs: spaces where multiple actors can collaborate and co-create.

‘Making the Most of What We Know’ about child marriage & adolescent female sexuality
An example of learning initiated by the More Than Brides Alliance is our multi-country, multi-alliance learning initiative aimed at ‘Making the Most of What We Know’ of the links between child marriage and female adolescent sexuality. The learning outcomes of the project will lay a more solid base so that organizations can implement and advocate for interventions that are grounded in promising practice and empirical evidence. The ‘Making the Most of What we Know’ learning project (2019-2021) is a complementary project funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is implemented in up to nine countries starting in the MTBA focus countries India, Pakistan, Malawi, Niger and Mali followed by Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal and Uganda. The project consists of the following innovative learning elements:

  1. Collating evidence & practice: bringing together practical implementation experience and research evidence about child marriage & adolescent female sexuality in knowledge products.
  2. Youth-led knowledge generation: Capturing the perspectives of girls and young women themselves.
  3. Learning and Exchange Spark fund: flexible and participatory grant-making mechanism for cross-partner, cross-country and cross-alliance learning.

All lessons learned of the different components of the ‘Making the Most of What We Know’ learning project will be brought together in an international learning meeting scheduled for February 2021. Resources developed as part of this project will be published on the resources and research section of this website.

Questions about the learning in MTBA? Check out our FAQ document or contact us.