training and SRH education provided through safe spaces from the impact of the other accompanying measures. We randomly assign localities to one of four groups: (i) a safe spaces only; (ii) a safe spaces combined with interventions to improve girls’ economic opportunities; (iii) a safe spaces combined with husbands’ and future husbands’ schools; and (iv) a spillover control group. These groups were further cross-randomized with an intervention to engage community and religious leaders, while 56 localities in the catchment areas of schools that did not receive the in-school intervention serve as a pure control group. We collected data from more than 3,000 out-of-school girls and their households at baseline and at first followup, approximately one year after the interventions ended. Following a pre-analysis plan, we analyze a comprehensive set of outcomes, including marriage and pregnancy, SRH behavior, income-generating activity and empowerment outcomes such as gender attitudes and decision-making power. We also investigate the mechanisms that may explain our findings.

One year after the end of the interventions, we find three main results. First, safe spaces alone improve SRH behavior, SRH knowledge, gender attitudes, and mental health, but do not translate into improved economic outcomes, socio-emotional skills, or decision-making. These findings suggest that equipping girls with knowledge and skills alone is insufficient to overcome binding household and community constraints. Second, combining safe spaces with IGA support increases girls’ SRH knowledge, gender attitudes, economic outcomes (0.18 standard deviations, hereafter SD), and socio-emotional skills (0.25 SD), but also leads to a significant increase in pregnancy rates (5.5 percentage points relative to control). This suggests that the intervention did not sufficiently alter the opportunity cost of childbearing, particularly in contexts where girls can engage in flexible income-generating activities such as agriculture, market stands and retail, that are compatible with early motherhood. Third, combining safe spaces with husbands’ clubs yields the broadest empowerment gains: SRH behavior (0.20 SD), income-generating activities (0.29 SD), socio-emotional skills (0.19 SD), and decision-making both on individual matters (0.20 SD) and within households (0.30 SD). Engaging community and religious leaders further enhanced these effects, particularly on girls’ socio-emotional skills and decision-making. In localities where safe spaces were combined with both leaders’ engagement and husbands’ clubs, we observed the most substantial impacts on multiple domains, with some suggestive evidence of a reduction in current pregnancy (36% relative to the control mean, significant at the 10%), though this may reflect timing rather than sustained fertility change as we find no impact on ever-pregnancy.

However, leader engagement also produced some unexpected results: in communities where leaders were engaged, especially those receiving IGA support or implementing husbands’ clubs, impacts on SRH knowledge were not statistically significant, even though safe spaces alone and safe spaces combined with husbands’ clubs (without leaders) significantly improved SRH knowledge. Qualitative research conducted with leaders targeted by the program reveals that these mixed results are likely due to implementation challenges in the to be part of the evaluation of _in-school_ safe spaces for _in-school_ girls. The results of this evaluation are not reported in this paper.

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