Hearing girls’ voices: conducting research during the pandemic in Bangladesh, India, Malawi, Nigeria and the US

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Girl Effect works to support adolescent girls in low- and middle-income countries to make choices so they are healthier, more educated and financially secure. Designed to ensure that girls’ voices are actively influencing the programmes that affect them, Technology Enabled Girl Ambassadors (TEGA) is Girl Effect’s female-operated digital research tool, allowing girls to collect real-time insights into the lives of their peers.

Young women, aged 18-24, are trained using a bespoke mobile app and, through a partnership with the MRS, become qualified digital researchers – TEGAs. We have been working with the MRS since 2016 to provide TEGAs with the MRS Certificate in Digital Interviewing Skills, awarded at the end of the training process.

TEGA faces perhaps its biggest challenge to date with Covid-19. It is, traditionally, a face-to-face methodology, but given that this type of fieldwork is not currently possible, we have had to evolve to ensure that we are still meeting all research needs while remaining true to the methodology. Our teams are working creatively to come up with a safe, scalable solution, and are exploring options for using technology to allow the TEGAs to conduct research remotely through their TEGA app.

As well as the challenges presented by Covid-19, we have seen an opportunity to amplify girls’ voices during this time. We believe that the way to make sure progress in gender equality isn’t lost to the pandemic is by putting girls at the centre of building the solutions, so they are active participants and their voices are heard. 

At a time when access to real-time, honest insights from girls is even more valuable, we launched Hear Her Voice: a storytelling research project in which the TEGAs turn the camera on themselves, using video diaries while traditional TEGA fieldwork is not possible.

The project has uncovered data on the impact of the pandemic on girls in Bangladesh, India, Malawi, Nigeria and the US. TEGAs are sharing their experiences of life under lockdown and the impact Covid-19 is having on their lives, to bring girls’ voices into the conversation and allow organisations to design programmes informed by their insights.

Topics covered include education, pastimes, girls’ hopes and fears, health and nutrition, and myths and stigma. In each location, these themes present themselves in different ways, with some unifying issues.

In Malawi, for example, there is some debate over whether Covid-19 has reached the country at all. In India, lack of access to sanitary products has led to TEGAs having to use cloths. In the US, struggles with mental health have been at the forefront of the girls’ stories.

A concern voiced by most TEGAs, regardless of location, is over their education; they fear what losing this time may mean for their futures – a worry exacerbated by digital inequality for those unable to access e-learning materials.

In addition to the Hear Her Voice project, our newest network of 28 TEGAs in North East Nigeria have recently received their MRS certificates – a great achievement, given the challenges not just with Covid-19, but with ongoing instability in this region. Standard practices around training and fieldwork were disrupted because of safety concerns, so parts of the in-person training were not possible. By adapting the programme, our team was able to pilot digital training methods to ensure the TEGAs graduated on time. 

At a time when girls’ lives across the world are likely to be impacted in major and, in many cases devastating, ways, it’s more important than ever to listen to their voices.

Despite the extraordinary global situation in which we find ourselves, we are continuing to shine a light on the lives of girls, providing them with a platform to tell their stories to the world. 

Lucy Powell is director of TEGA at Girl Effect. This article was first published in the July edition of Impact.