The pilot roll out of Safe Space Youth Clubs (SSYCs) has begun in Northern Nigeria. The project is looking into using age specific curricula to build health, education and financial knowledge skills. The SSYCs is a Community Space for Adolescent Girls’ Empowerment (CSGAE).
CSAGE adapted a Population Council developed Community Mapping tools that use mobile phone technology to capture household level data on adolescent girls and also map services and resources in catchment areas for each SSYC as a way of ensuring that its Community Partners are able to reach girls most in need of support.
The five-year DFID-funded project is designed to reach 100,000 girls in six Northern Nigeria states of Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Yobe, and Zamfara.
The research team has already worked with community partners in Jigawa, Kaduna, and Kano to map communities and build the “girl rosters” for the roll-out of the first 125 pilot SSYCs scheduled to begin this month. Already Zamfara and Katsina are scheduled commenced the roll-out in for April, as the pilot SSYCs will reach over 2,500 girls.
The Open Data Kit (ODK)-based technology is simple to use for most community partners and allows more sophisticated users to move large quantities of data into data storage, GIS, and analysis platforms for programme design, M&E and research purposes.
The application used by CSAGE for community resource mapping has an interface with Google Maps for near real-time visual presentation of community resource maps and clustering of girls identified through household listing.
