The Population Council develops and implements evidence-based economic strengthening programming for adolescent girls in Sub Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The Council's model is an iterative process combining research and programming. The growing evidence base from active programming drives the next round of interventions. This webinar focused on how the Council's research and interventions support each other, and how they have shaped the organization's direction and current research questions.
In this installment, Karen Austrian, Sajeda Amin, and Sarah Engebretsen shared their work in developing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based programs for marginalized adolescent girls.
The Population Council conducts research to address critical health and development issues in more than 50 countries. Its New York headquarters supports a global network of offices in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Sarah Engebretsen
Sarah Engebretsen specializes in developing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based programs for marginalized adolescent girls, with a particular interest in West Africa. She joined the Population Council in 2007. She is co-author of Girls on the Move: Adolescent Girls & Migration in the Developing World, a report that draws attention to a population of vulnerable adolescent girls who were previously overlooked. Prior to her work at the Council, Engebretsen conducted contraceptive research at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies. She is a member of the American Public Health Association and the Global Health Council. She is co-chair and a member of the steering committee of the Coalition for Adolescent Girls, a group that informs donors, policymakers, and other key decisionmakers about programmatic, funding, and research priorities for adolescent girls. Engebretsen holds a master's of public health from Columbia University's Department of Population and Family Health, where she specialized in reproductive, adolescent, and child health.
Karen Austrian
Karen Austrian manages Population Council projects designed to empower girls in east and southern Africa. She develops, implements, and evaluates programs that build girls’ protective assets, such as financial literacy and sexual health and rights. Austrian has provided technical assistance on girls’ programs and policies to the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Girl Hub, the Nike Foundation, and international, national, and community organizations. Austrian has an MPH from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and is working toward her PhD in epidemiology from Ben Gurion University in Israel.
Sajeda Amin
Sajeda Amin leads the Population Council’s work on livelihoods for adolescent girls. She is a senior sociologist and demographer with decades of experience generating evidence on empowerment programs for girls and women. She also studies the role of work opportunities in girls’ and women’s lives. She is an expert on micro-finance, financial literacy, prevention of child marriage, girls’ and women’s factory work and time-use patterns, and the provision of incentives in the education sector, and has worked with LAN-International, UNICEF, UNFPA, and the World Bank. She has edited, authored, or co-authored more than 80 research papers and holds a master’s in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School and a PhD in sociology and demography from Princeton University.
Jennifer Denomy
Jennifer Denomy is the facilitator of the Youth and Financial Services Working Group and the Director of Youth Economic Opportunities at MEDA, responsible for strategy to promote increased financial access, entrepreneurship and employment opportunities for young people. MEDA’s youth programming includes successful long and short term initiatives in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen and Afghanistan, supporting non-formal education and workplace safety initiatives with working youth. She also facilitated the SEEP Youth Financial Services Practitioner Learning Program, a three-year action research project. Prior to joining MEDA, Jennifer worked as the pedagogical manager of a teacher training centre in Germany and a curriculum designer for BRAC’s Nonformal Primary Education Program in Bangladesh. Jennifer holds an M.Ed. in Comparative, International and Development Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) and an MA from McGill University.
Categories: Women and Girls Women's Economic Empowerment English Unpublished Resources Published Blogs/Webinars Webinar Womens Economic Empowerment Webinar
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