Break Free! (Program) SUMMARY
Millions of young people grow up and become sexually active without access to timely, appropriate and gender-responsive (SRHR) education, information and services, making them vulnerable to unintended pregnancies, often followed by child marriage. Break Free! empowers young people to make their own free and informed choices and to have control over their SRH and lives. In order to address Child, Early and Forced Marriage/Union (CEFMU) as a human rights violation, the programme promotes gender equality and empowerment of girls and young women by tackling root causes of gender inequality, unequal gender power relations and discriminatory social norms, policies and practices, supported by civil society and improved legislation.
The project will be implemented from2021-2025 by Plan International Nederland, SAT and FAWE, technical partners KIT and RMT and Netherlands’ Embassies in the relevant countries.
Descriptions of the baseline values are included in Annex 2 of the Annual Report 2021. The prevention of CEFMU and TP is more urgent than ever, as the COVID-19 situation has dramatically changed the context in which adolescent girls live resulting in increasing levels of gender based violence, increasing unpaid care work, rising sexual exploitation, decreased access to education and increasing rates of CM and TP. This crisis has further isolated and excluded adolescent girls in remote areas from accessing SRHR information and services, especially concerning contraception and other essential SRH services. Lockdown restrictions and enforcement of COVID-19 prevention methods have led to an increase in harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation/ Cutting (FGM/C) and CEFMU, reducing the effectiveness of referral pathways for essential services, and resulting in poorer SRH outcomes for girls. The loss of employment and income by parents and caregivers is expected to increase girls’ school dropout and girls’ vulnerability to sexual exploitation, resulting in TP and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), including HIV. This economic downturn will likely have a large impact on the poverty levels in low-income countries where CEFMU is most prevalent. Because poverty is a key driver of child marriage, these economic impacts are anticipated to increase rates of CEFMU and TP in vulnerable communities. At the same time, many girls have dropped out from school and are likely never to return, leaving them with few options other than CEFMU and TP. Empowering adolescents to claim their SRHR rights, supported by civil society, will be achieved if  CSOs, youth-led groups and networks are strengthened to lobby and advocate for improved legislation and to promote social norm change in favour of the prevention of CM/TP, and in some countries FGM/C. 
Education opportunities and a community supportive of girls’ education will stimulate adolescent girls at risk of TP/CM to access and remain in school, while promoting the re-entrance of girls who have discontinued school due to pregnancy. In order to create a supportive and improved socio-cultural environment that promotes education for girls and SRHR for young people, relevant gate keepers, teachers and parents will be made aware of the importance of adopting attitudes favourable to keeping girls in school. 
Supporting civil society organisations to organise, participate and communicate enables them to claim better education and SRHR outcomes for girls and young women, and influence decision-making processes. Duty bearers and decision-makers are made aware of and encouraged to take action to fulfil the education needs of girls based on the effective lobby and advocacy of civil society. Decision-makers at local, national, regional and continental level will be sensitized to build linkages between the levels resulting that civil society is able to elevate issues to higher decision-making levels, and vice versa, they can hold lower-level policy makers and duty bearers accountable for implementing decisions taken at higher levels. This will be enabled by establishing participation and accountability mechanisms between decision-makers/duty bearers and civil society with the support of enhanced youth agency. The programme is a.o. based upon the results and findings of the Yes I Do programme (2015-2020), implemented by Plan in five of the nine BF! countries combined with experience of FAWE and SAT’s programmes on this theme. All partners have experience on improving legislation and policies on CM (and FGM/C) and implementation thereof, through L&A and enhancing adolescent’s skills to claim their SRH rights and quality of SRH education, information and service provision. This resulted a.o. into the development of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Model Law on Eradicating Child Marriage, served as legal framework for national law and policy-makers and was used as civil society (CS) advocacy tool across the SADC region. It resulted as well in strengthened CSOs, youth hubs and girls clubs, which have become promoters of ASRHR.  However, CSOs advocating for GYW rights and SRHR particularly face an increasingly hostile environment fuelled by authoritarian governments, traditional/religious systems and fundamentalist forces, depicting adolescent SRHR (ASRHR) and GE as threatening traditional and family values. In the Sahel focus countries, conflict affects freedom of movement and drives authorities to further confine civic space. Violent extremist attacks often target GYW and further reduce their opportunities for collective activism. Deeply rooted gender norms in selected Southern and Eastern African countries, combined with authoritarian governments, limit the space for CSOs to claim SRH rights.
By establishing participation and accountability mechanisms between decision makers and civil society with the support of enhanced youth agency, political will increases and civil society has the capacity to advocate for improved SRHR, CM and education related policies, laws and resourcing. Within the population of girls and young women (between 14 till 24 years), the programme aims to strengthen the influence and participation of GYW who suffer most from (intersectional) discrimination and exclusion and actively engage adolescent and young boys and men for this. These include:
•	GYW living in poor, remote rural areas and urban slums
•	GYW experiencing gender based violence (particularly girls who have married early)
•	GYW with disabilities
•	GYW who are out of school
•	Refugee and internally displaced GYW
•	GYW from sexual minority groups The project will be implemented between 2021 and 2025 by Plan International Nederland, SAT and FAWE, technical partners KIT and RMT and Netherlands’ Embassies in the relevant countries. Break Free! contributes to a lasting transformative effect on engagement of GYW in decision-making. The following strategies will be implemented: 

1.	Strengthening and resourcing GYW-led organizations: investing in the resource base of GYW-led organizations will help them access other funding in the future. 
2.	Support social movements: social movements can accelerate lasting change in societies’ structures and norms. She Leads will bring together child-rights and feminist organisations and GYW-led groups to push collectively for transformative change in gender norms, and for institutional reform. 
3.	Engaging boys & men, parents, and traditional and religious leaders: these actors are crucial allies to ensure structural change and permanent effects when it comes to norms change. Because of their status and their role in socialisation processes, these actors promote structural change in societies. 
4.	Engaging media: BreakFree! will use media as a tool to amplify GYWs voices, and will target media as a powerful agent of change. Opening space for GYW’s voices and leadership in the media will ultimately influence broader communities, and has lasting effects beyond the programme.
5.	Organisational capacity strengthening of CSO’s: investments in advocacy capacity, building relationships with decision-makers, strengthening fundraising skills will have a lasting effect on their influencing work beyond She Leads. 
6.	Linking local, national, regional and global: BreakFree! is implemented at different levels that are strategically interconnected. Interventions and results in one domain trigger change in other domains, and changes at local, national, regional and international levels are connected and influence each other.