of 18 months because of the COVID-19 restrictions in 2020. Eligible girls participated in the identification of venues for community-based safe spaces, allowing them to ensure a level of security, confidentiality, and privacy. In the regions where the evaluation took place, the mentors in charge of facilitating the sessions were women living in the community, selected and trained for 21 days by the implementing NGO, the International Rescue Committee (IRC). All selected mentors were validated by the beneficiaries to ensure that they identify the woman as a role model and to promote a trusting relationship. To the extent possible, the mentors respected the following two criteria: being between 25 and 45 years old and having completed 9th grade. However, since it was challenging to identify women who met the minimum education requirement and were willing to undertake a volunteer job (stipends provided but no salary), the NGO had to select a few mentors who were not literate. This most likely caused quality issues in the delivery of the curriculum in a few safe spaces.

# **2.2.2 Support for Income-Generating Activities (IGA) Intervention**

The goal of the IGA intervention is to strengthen vocational and income-generating capacities to contribute to the socio-economic empowerment of girls. The intervention targeted beneficiaries of safe spaces who were 16 years old or older at the time of the start of the intervention (i.e., 15 years old or older at baseline). It comprised three different components: (i) an entrepreneurship training of 13 hours running over 3 days; (ii) a one-on-one coaching service that gave personalized advice on the creation of a business; and (iii) a lump-sum cash grant provided to individual girls or groups of girls on the basis of a business plan. The curriculum of the entrepreneurship training was composed of a financial and business skills section (entry cost, business plan, management, costs registry) as well as a socio-emotional skills section (self-esteem, listening and empathy, stress management, and problem solving). According to the program monitoring data, given grants ranged from 25,000 to 1,500,000 CFA francs, with an average amount per girl of 55,900 CFA francs (228 USD purchasing power parity 2019).<sup>3</sup> The high variation in the size of the grant is due to the varying number of business associates (i.e., beneficiaries who associate to work on a business plan) and to the predicted volume of sales of the IGA. The majority of the created IGA were small-scale activities in the food processing sector or in the food and nonfood retail sectors. The IGA intervention, also implemented by the IRC, was delayed due to institutional constraints and the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced the duration from 12 months initially planned to only 6 months.

# **2.2.3 Husbands’ and Future Husbands’ Clubs**

In addition to safe spaces, husbands’ and future husbands’ clubs, sometimes referred to as husbands’ clubs for fluidity, were implemented to involve men and boys as partners in family health and family planning. The clubs aimed to engage men in discussions on gender

> 3Conversion factor = 245.51. Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP?locations=CI.

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