OUR WORK AND IMPACT
Growing Up GREAT!: The Way Forward / « Bien Grandir : La Voie à Suivre! »
Growing Up GREAT!: The Way Forward (GUG!) is a longitudinal multi-level intervention in Kinshasa, DRC for very young adolescents (VYAs), their parents and caregivers and other influential community members. It uses an ecological approach to provide information and address social and gender norms related to reproductive health and wellbeing at each of these levels, with the goal of improving sexual and reproductive health outcomes among in-school and out-of-school VYAs (10-14 years).
The GUG! consortium – Save the Children, the Global Early Adolescent Study/Johns Hopkins University (GEAS-JHU), UCSD/GEH, and the Institute for Reproductive Health/Georgetown University – brings together implementers, researchers, scale-up experts, and implementation scientists to generate evidence on the value of investing in interventions with early adolescents in order to foster effective contraceptive use as they enter older adolescence and young adulthood. The GUG! consortium’s intermediate outcomes are: 1) Build understanding of how gender attitudes, behaviors, and norms are formed and transformed among very young adolescents, and their medium-term life course trajectories; 2) Institutionalize the GUG! intervention within the Ministry of Education and community-based partners in Kinshasa; and 3) Generate knowledge on how to sustain and scale gender and Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) interventions for early adolescents, including the feasibility and acceptability of engaging parents.
Relevant Materials:
Growing Up GREAT! Impact Brief: in English and French
Save the Children’s Growing Up GREAT! Resource Collection
Growing Up GREAT! Implementation Guide
Profiles of Very Young Adolescents in Urban Kinshasa, Growing Up GREAT! Baseline Brief: in English and French
Global Early Adolescent Study – longitudinal and outcome evaluation findings:
Integrating Family Life Education into Distance Learning during COVID-19 Closures: in English and French
Growing Up GREAT! End of Project Report
Related Projects:
Global Early Adolescent Study/Johns Hopkins University (GEAS-JHU)
Principal Investigator

Democratic Republic of the Congo
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