Amplifying girls’ voices and visibility has been highlighted as a key approach both to ensure programming aims to meet their needs, and to increase young people’s voice, agency and participation in decisions that affect their lives – both as individuals and collectively. There have been growing calls to increase funding to movements and organisations led by girls and youth (Arutynova et al., 2022; Salley, 2019; Mama Cash and FRIDA The Young Feminist Fund, 2018). To date, however, there is limited evidence on how much funding is currently invested in adolescent-and youth-led organisations.

A significant proportion of the global population is comprised of adolescents and young people, with an estimated 1.2 billion individuals aged between 10 and 24 years old – the largest ever cohort in history. Adolescence defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the phase of life between the ages of 10 to 19 years – is recognized as a unique and critical life stage marked by the transition from childhood to adulthood.

The Investing in Adolescent Girls Report by GAGE produces a comprehensive snapshot of investments in adolescent girls’ development as well as identifies which aspects of girls’ lives and well-being the funds are directed to, so as to facilitate a discussion on key priorities for future investments.

This report by GAGE, on behalf of AGIP, investigates what we know about adolescent and youth well-being based on available SDG indicator data, and the extent to which data are usefully disaggregated and reported. The report answers three overarching questions:

With the COVID-19 crisis continuing to evolve, evidence on the effectiveness of short-term emergency-oriented responses and long-term mitigation strategies is expanding but still limited. There are, and will continue to be, substantial evidence gaps on programming to address risk across outcomes of importance to adolescent girls.

More evidence is needed to slow the risks posed by the pandemic for this sub-population, which can help guide gender- and age-responsive prevention and impact mitigation investments. Evidence from approaches delivered in other unstable contexts may offer important lessons for decision-making in the current context. Recognizing this, Population Council conducted a structured review (under the auspices of the AGIP) of existing evidence collected prior to the pandemic, across low- and middle-income country contexts.