"Safe Age of Marriage" in Yemen: Fostering Change in Social Norms

This brief describes how the Extending Service Delivery (ESD) Project, in partnership with the Basic Health Services (BHS) Project in Yemen and the Yemeni Women's Union (YWU), implemented the "Safe Age of Marriage" programme as part of Yemen's national effort to reduce maternal and neonatal mortalities. The pilot programme drew on voluntary community educators to communicate messages about ending marriage before the age of 18 and improving the poor health and social outcomes of young girls by changing entrenched social/gender norms and by stressing the importance of girls' education.

To begin, organisers selected and trained 20 male and 20 female volunteer community educators, including religious leaders and nurse midwives. In December 2008, these community educators carried out a baseline survey of 400 households to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practice of child marriage in Al Sawd and Al Soodah. In addition to the baseline, a focus group discussion (FGD) with 12 unmarried girls (9-15 years of age) took place to assess their dreams and aspirations. The community educators also conducted an endline survey to assess changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours related to child marriage.

As detailed here, over the life of the 1-year pilot programme, community educators conducted over 1,316 outreach interventions, reaching nearly 29,000 people; they "were instrumental in postponing/preventing 53 girl-child and 26 boy-child marriages." They were also involved in other project activities, such as development and distribution of: 4 newsletters, a brochure, and 3 radio messages (aired 3 times daily for 4 months); 7 community fairs; school-based education and essay competitions among students in 20 schools; and an end-of-project ceremony honouring 10 model families and highlighting project activities and findings, including results of disseminating findings from focus group discussions with young girls about their future dreams and aspirations.

The endline survey indicates that there was an 18% increase in awareness about the benefits of delaying marriage (77% at baseline to 95% at endline). Also, there was a 16% increase in agreement that there is a relationship between early marriage, early pregnancy, and childbearing: from 53% at baseline to 69% at endline.

Challenges and lessons learned from this experience are outlined.

• In the area of programme planning: maximise reach through collaboration with government initiatives and promote local buy-in (e.g., actively engage religious leaders, the main gatekeepers in rural communities, to increase the acceptance of the project).
• Attend to cultural issues (e.g., female community educators were reticent to ask questions and voice their concerns during the training workshop. Their literacy skills and basic knowledge on reproductive health and family planning were lacking, as compared to their male counterparts).
• Minimise political and religious opposition (e.g., make an effort to select community educators who belong to the major political parties in the country) and engage political leaders in basic project messages.
• Focus on capacity-building (e.g., train community educators on a range of facilitation techniques to use when disseminating their messages on child marriage).