Break Free! – Young people advocate for their sexual and reproductive health and rights
- Countries
- Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sudan, and Zambia.
- Status
- Completed
- Duration
- 2021-2025
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About the Programme
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are critical to the healthy development of young people. Yet across many African countries, young people face inaccurate information, limited access to health services, and restrictive gender norms. For girls in particular, child marriage, teenage pregnancy, and female genital mutilation/cutting continue to shape their health, education, and life opportunities.
Break Free! (2021–2025) strengthens adolescents’ and young people’s SRHR and promotes gender equality across nine African countries, supporting young people to make informed decisions about their futures. The programme is led by Plan International and implemented in partnership with SRHR Africa Trust (SAT) and the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Programme objectives
- Strengthen the SRHR of young people by providing them with accurate information and enabling access to appropriate health care services
- Promote better decision-making and effective implementation of laws and policies that address the needs of young people
- Ensure proper and safe education for girls at risk of child marriage and teenage pregnancy.
KIT’s Role: Research and MEL Partnership
KIT Institute served as a technical partner to the Break Free! consortium, providing independent research, evidence generation, and Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (PMEL) support throughout the programme cycle.
Research Expertise
KIT conducted rigorous, policy- and programming- relevant research on adolescents’ and young people’s SRHR across the nine countries where the programme has been implemented. Our research portfolio spanned desk reviews, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies, as well as longitudinal research – generating evidence on young people’s SRHR needs, barriers to information and services, drivers of child marriage and teenage pregnancy, and the dynamics of advocacy and social norm change. While a research agenda was established at the programme’s outset, a key factor in the success of the research component was the flexibility to iterate and respond to ad-hoc knowledge questions raised by consortium partners throughout the programme – ensuring that evidence remained timely, relevant, and directly actionable for the teams working on the ground. This approach allowed study findings to feed directly into lobby and advocacy strategies towards governments and donors, as well as into community-based activities.
Youth-Participatory Research
A distinctive feature of KIT’s work in Break Free! was the central involvement of young people as research participants and, on several occasions, as co-researchers. In multiple studies, youth have acted as co-researchers throughout the research process throughout the research cycle. Youth have also been actively involved in the co-facilitatation of and participation in co-creation workshops and sense-making sessions in which young people validated findings and co-developed recommendations. Youth have also acted as key members in research advisory groups. In our studies, KIT has applied a variety of youth-friendly participatory methods, including creative methods such as drama, vignette statements, “Where do I stand?” exercises, and longitudinal reflection diaries, to generate evidence that is grounded in young people’s own experiences and perspectives
This approach ensures that research was grounded in the realities and perspectives of the young people Break Free! seeks to reach; and that findings reflected their voices, not just those of programme staff or community stakeholders.
Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)
KIT’s MEL support went beyond conventional monitoring to embed participation and learning throughout the programme. Key contributions included:
- Mid-term review (2023): A comprehensive mixed-methods review – including outcome harvesting, stakeholder interviews, focus group discussions, meaningful youth participation survey with youth and a consortium-wide partnership survey, and national reflection workshops – assessing programme progress, Theory of Change validity, and recommendations for the remaining programme years
- Regional learning meetings: KIT initiated and co-facilitated online exchanges across three regional clusters (West, East, and Southern Africa), supporting cross-country knowledge translation and joint reflection on identified themes such as climate and SRHR, sustainability, and advocacy
- Global learning event (Nairobi, June 2025): KIT played a key role in facilitating the programme’s closing global learning event, bringing together consortium members from all nine countries to celebrate achievements, document lessons, and inform future programming
KIT’s MEL approach was explicitly participatory, designed to strengthen the learning culture of the consortium, elevate youth and partner voices in reflection processes, and generate actionable insights that programme partners can use in real time.
Key Insights
Over five years, KIT’s studies have generated a rich body of evidence on what works – and what remains challenging – in advancing young people’s SRHR in sub-Saharan Africa. Key themes emerging across the research portfolio include:
Youth-led advocacy: motivated, but under-resourced
Young people across programme countries view themselves as central stakeholders in SRHR and are strongly motivated to drive change. Yet youth-led advocacy is consistently constrained by limited flexible funding, tokenistic inclusion in decision-making, and dependence on NGO structures that can restrict autonomous agenda-setting. Longitudinal follow-up over two years showed real gains in skills and confidence – but also that participation remained partial to urban educated youth in Malawi, while in Niger, youth-led advocacy was locally supported but constrained by limited resources.
Publications
Unravelling the chain of youth-led advocacy for SRHR – a study in three Break Free! countries about young people’s involvement in advocacy and what we can learn from it
Following youth over time: documenting experiences of youth advocates in Malawi and Niger
Digital SRHR platforms: reach and its limits
Digital platforms can meaningfully expand SRHR knowledge and peer dialogue, especially in urban areas. However, language barriers, limited rural connectivity, low digital literacy, and weak linkages between online and offline programming exclude the most vulnerable young people. Maximum impact requires stronger integration of offline components and content adapted to local languages and contexts.
Intergenerational dynamics as a lever for change
SRHR conversations within families are largely crisis-driven and framed by fear or moral judgment rather than open dialogue, with fathers particularly absent. Structured interventions – whether positive parenting training or facilitated intergenerational dialogues – can open communication, reduce harsh discipline, and strengthen support for girls’ education. However, one-off sessions have limited sustained impact; repeated cycles, community embedding and enabling facilitation methods are essential.
Sexuality education: politically contested, unevenly delivered
SRH education across programme countries is shaped by religious and political opposition, weak alignment between health and education sectors, and fragmented provision that largely fails out-of-school adolescents. Engaging religious and community leaders as entry points – rather than treating them as obstacles – emerges as critical for expanding acceptance and coverage.
Publications
- Desk review on Sexual and Reproductive Health Education in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – French
- Executive Summary – Sexual and Reproductive Health Education in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – English
- Understanding the nature of public and political polemics on comprehensive sexuality education in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia [internal document]
Social norms and structural drivers of child marriage and teenage pregnancy
Child marriage and teenage pregnancy cannot be explained by poverty alone. The interplay of education, cultural norms, and local context drives outcomes – as illustrated by contrasting marriage rates between two Zambian provinces despite similar poverty levels. Effective interventions must be multi-component, address both norms and structural barriers, and engage boys, men, and community gatekeepers alongside girls. Law change alone is insufficient without sustained norm-change strategies.
Legal frameworks: protective on paper, limited in practice
Formal laws and community bylaws to protect young people from child marriage often exist on paper but fail in practice, undermined by low awareness, weak enforcement, and the gap between statutory frameworks and the social and religious norms governing everyday life. In Sudan, overlapping Sharia, civil, and customary law creates confusion that enables child marriage to persist despite protective legislation. In Malawi, community bylaws function more as punitive financial mechanisms than rights-promoting tools, with young people rarely involved in formulating the very rules meant to protect them. Legal reform without sustained community engagement and norm change will not translate into meaningful protection, and even risks further entrenching already existing inequalities.
Climate change as an emerging risk to SRHR, gender equality and education
Climate shocks are intensifying the structural drivers of teenage pregnancy and child marriage through school closures, economic insecurity, and increased GBV exposure. Despite growing visibility of gender and youth in climate frameworks, SRHR remains sidelined and the interlinkages between climate effects on SRHR, gender and education are underexplored. Future programming needs to anticipate climate-related disruptions and design adaptive, resilient approaches, particularly for the most marginalised. The Break Free! programme also developed specific guidance on adaptive programming in disaster-prone settings.
