When AGIP was conceived in March of 2019 and formalized at the end of that year, it sought to address three intersecting challenges to achieving adolescent girls’ full choice, voice, and agency:
- A lack of commitment to girls and to their distinct needs, as measured by lack of financial investment in programs to support adolescent girls and lack of political leaders’ attention to this key population.
- Low evidence availability and uptake by donors, governments, and program implementers that would improve adolescent girls’ outcomes.
- Limited capacity, knowledge, and skills for those working in the public and nonprofit sector as to how best to meet the needs of adolescent girls.
AGIP’s earliest phase (2019-2021) was seeded by a grant from the Ford Foundation, with a five year plan emphasizing the development of national investment frameworks, costed implementation models, and the establishment of scorecards.
Its earliest weeks, though, were shaped by the compounding impact of COVID-19. Despite this seismic disruption, AGIP maintained its focus as it shifted its methods, shaping participatory research, the creation of accountability tools, and virtual engagement with lower and middle income governments.
AGIP sharpened its attention on risk and opportunity pathways for adolescent girls, leaning into and virtual engagement to develop intergenerational, multi-stakeholder advocacy with governments in global advocacy platforms.
Even in this nascent phase, AGIP realized early the global opportunity that Generation Equality Forum (GEF) presented for elevating the needs of adolescent girls within the broader context of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Beijing Platform for Action, among other multi-sectoral platforms.
AGIP spent a significant portion of this period shaping not just where and what the GEF commitments should be, but how and with whom it should design them. The GEF work is an example of an early, strategic pivot that set the stage for AGIP’s future achievements – increasing adolescent girls’ access to global decision-makers where those platforms exist, and creating them where they did not.