Annual Report 2023
Shifting Power and Resources to
Adolescent Girls and Young Women
Hello,
2023 was undoubtedly a big year for us: from bringing adolescent girls and young women to champion our advocacy at Women Deliver 2023 (WD 2023) and the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to launching our very own Adolescent Girls Advisory Committee (AGAC), we have been working hard internally and externally with and for adolescent girls’ rights.
As with all our reports, our 2023 Annual Report amplifies the voices of adolescent girls and young leaders we have worked with to drive political commitment, ensure girls are centered wherever decisions concerning their lives are made, and generate evidence through research initiatives
We hope that the resources shared alongside the summaries of 2023’s activities will be valuable to your work.
If anything resonates with you, or you wish to discuss any concept further, please don’t hesitate to contact the AGIP Secretariat.
In solidarity,
The Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (AGIP)
CLOSING THE GAP
RESEARCH
SAFEGUARDING
COMMUNICATIONS
ABOUT AGIP
CLosing the gap
We co-created two events: Where is the Money? and No more excuses! in collaboration with adolescent girls and young women. Each event had over 100 attendees!
We organised an event, Meaningful Adolescent and Youth Engagement: An Unfulfilled Promise and the Road Ahead in partnership with several allies to highlight best practices on engaging young people across all levels of decision-making.
We wrote an open letter to UN Women holding them accountable on their commitment to establish an Adolescent Girls Advisory Body as a formal accountability mechanism in the Generation Equality process.
Co-hosted the SDG Summit side event 'Youth & Adolescent Girls Driving the 2030 Agenda’. A youth speaker from AGIP’s network, Thuba, brought the house down with an intervention on resourcing girls. We also connected with stakeholders at the GEF Midpoint Moment.
OPEN LETTER TO UN WOMEN
Developed clear demands with adolescent girls: Calls to Action on Accountability for Adolescent Girls and Resourcing Adolescent Girls showcase the urgency for shifting power and resources.
GLOBAL FORUM FOR ADOLESCENTS
WOMEN DELIVER 2023
CALLS TO ACTION
UNGA & GEF MIDPOINT
RESEARCH
a) Investing in adolescent girls: Key changes in the bilateral donor funding landscape - 2021 update
During UNGA week, we launched an update to our ‘Investing in Adolescent Girls: mapping global and national funding patterns from 2016-2020’. The new report ‘Investing in adolescent girls: Key changes in the bilateral donor funding landscape - 2021 update’ highlights the unique challenges faced by adolescent girls in particular and emphasizes the critical importance of robust and disaggregated data collection efforts that capture inequalities faced by adolescents, which are paramount to driving smart investment and significant returns.
b) From Advocacy to Action: Lessons on girl and youth-led systems accountability in India, Kenya, and Uganda
We launched research focusing on ‘Lessons on girl and youth-led systems accountability’ at one of our concurrent events at the Women Deliver 2023 Conference. The report dissects tools and approaches adolescents and youth already use to hold decision-makers in their communities to account and ends with a summary of powerful recommendations for systems change.
SAFEGUARDING
- As technical safeguarding partners for the Women Deliver 2023 Conference, we convened a multi-stakeholder group of safeguarding professionals, as well as engaging with young people and sector peers through Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and a survey to create safeguarding recommendations and guidelines for keeping young people safe in both the online and on-site Conference events. Although focussed on young people’s safety, the technical recommendations informed all aspects of safeguarding measures and enabled a safe space for all 6300+ Conference attendees. You can read our reflections on this work here.
- We completed an internal annual refresher and review meeting on safeguarding with AGIP member organizations to ensure that all Girl and Youth focal point members within AGIP have clarity on AGIP’s safeguarding process and policy, and that they are aware of the shared responsibility to uphold the same in our work. We also organised a capacity strengthening session on safeguarding for our Girl Advisors to ensure they are aware of the AGIP processes, as well have knowledge and resources to navigate digital spaces safely.
GIRL AND YOUTH ENGAGEMENT
Habitat
AGAC
Initiated the first ever Adolescent Girls Advisory Committee (AGAC) to share decision-making power with adolescent girls.
Three Girl Advisors were democratically elected to be AGIP board members. We also initiated a blog space to amplify their voices and initiatives.
Ecosystem
AGAC at UNGA 78
Our Girl Advisor and Board member Misati joined UNGA 78 in-person to share her opinions and represent her fellow girl leaders in conversations with member states, INGOs, CSOs, and other stakeholders.
Biodiversity
GEF 2023
Our Girl Advisor Rushna was a speaker in a session, ‘Meaningful adolescent and youth engagement: An unfulfilled promise and the road ahead‘, while Nhi, another Girl Advisor, spoke in a session, ‘Invest we must! The time is now: Making the case for investing in adolescent well-being.’
GIRL AND YOUTH ENGAGEMENT
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Co-created two Women Deliver 2023 Conference (WD 2023) events with 3 adolescent girls and 1 young woman and engaged 9 adolescent girls and 12 youths as participants and speakers in various other opportunities.
Delivered a presentation as one of the guest experts on key aspects of meaningful engagement with young people through our work with the Girls Advisory Committee during an internal learning session organised by The Freedom Fund in November 2023.
Shift the Power Global Summit: Our Girl and Youth Engagement Specialist received a travel grant to participate in the Shift the Power Global Summit held in Bogota, Colombia from 5-7 December 2023. Read her reflections.
In line with our current strategy, we invested in our governance structure. Aside from launching our very own Adolescent Girls Advisory Committee (AGAC), we welcomed new members to our Board. Joy Zawadi (Akili Dada) and Kathleen Sherwin (Plan International) were confirmed as the Co-Chairs, while Pranita Achyut (ICRW) and Paola and Misati from the AGAC joined as Board members.
In December we confirmed a new Board role: Vice Chair – Youth, which Ximena from the AGAC will fulfill until the end of the term of our current AGAC members. We are thrilled to have three AGAC members on the Board!
NEW BOARD MEMBERS
Joy Zawadi
Kathleen Sherwin
Ximena
Pranita Achyut
Misati
Paola
AGIP Board Member
AGAC
AGIP Co-Chair
ED, Akili Dada
AGIP Co-Chair
CSEO, Plan International
AGIP Board Member
AGAC
AGIP Vice-Chair
Youth, AGAC
AGIP Board Member
ICRW
MEMBER DEVELOPMENT
In March, we sent a ‘Closed Call for Membership’ to organisations in our network that had previously expressed interest in joining AGIP.
The AGIP Secretariat received many applications during the process. After careful consideration, we determined these 5 organisations would benefit from AGIP in 2023:
- Peace Sisters
- Breakthrough
- Restless Development
- Community Centre for Integrated Development
- Let Girls Learn Initiative
They have been onboarded to the AGIP space and are active in the various working groups.
You can find a list of our global members here.
COMMUNICATIONS
The revamped website also includes a ‘Girl Voices’ blog page dedicated solely for our advisors on the Adolescent Girls Advisory Committee. We know that this will become a space for adolescent girls and young women to share what they’re passionate about.
This section was launched on International Day of the Girl with a post by Paola titled, ‘Girls want to and, most importantly, have the right to learn’.
In 2023, we welcomed 393 new X (Twitter) followers and 155 new newsletter subscribers. We also created an Instagram account in June and currently have a following of 366.
If you haven’t found us yet, follow us on @AdolescentPlan (X) and @AdolescentGirlsPlan (Instagram). You can sign up for our newsletter and read any publications we shared throughout 2023 here.
We re-worked our website to better illustrate our areas of action, and to create a ‘home’ for the resources we plan to share with this movement.
Our new website is in line with our strategy of ‘Girls on the Agenda and at the Table’ with dedicated pages to showcase how we are working towards achieving a world where girls have the voice, choice, and agency to determine their futures.
ABOUT US
The Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (AGIP) is a global, intergenerational, feminist coalition with members from girl-centred, global- and national-level research and development organisations. We collaborate to drive political commitment and evidence-informed investments to shift outcomes for adolescent girls and advocate for the meaningful engagement, resourcing, and co-leadership of adolescent girls.
Our global members are united by their commitment to stand alongside adolescent girls to advance girls’ rights and gender equality. Together with adolescent girls, we influence global decision-making spaces so that more power and resources are shifted to adolescent girls and young feminist-led organisations. Our advocacy is grounded in evidence and informed by data and lived experience alike. Our research offers insights into areas concerning adolescent girls that are not yet addressed and may inform programming and advocacy.
Meaningful girl and youth engagement is at the core of everything we do: our approach centres safety and well-being, and all our engagements are co-created and delivered in partnership with adolescent girls. Through our very own Adolescent Girls Advisory Committee (AGAC), we strive to share decision-making power with adolescent girls at all levels of the coalition, including our Board.
Questions, queries or comments?
We would love to hear from you!
Website: https://adolescent-girls-plan.org/about/
Twitter: @AdolescentPlan
Instagram: @AdolescentGirlsPlan
