YouthPower Action Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) Mentoring Program Toolkit

The YouthPower Action mentoring program for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) is a multi-component intervention including group-based mentoring; curricula-based programming covering sexual and reproductive health, financial capabilities, soft skills, and gender content; activities designed to improve participants’ social connectedness; optional onsite STI, HIV, and pregnancy testing along with STI treatment; group-based savings; and links to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, including contraceptive and gender-based violence services. This toolkit is intended to support the implementation of this holistic approach in a group-based, safe-space, setting.

The toolkit consists of four parts:
I) the Trainer Handbook, designed to support the training of mentors and to provide mentors with the skills they need to work with AGYW;
II) the Mentor Handbook provides a framework for trained adult female mentors to lead groups of AGYW and consists of 26 sessions covering soft-skills, financial education, and SRH education;
III) the Participant Handbook includes worksheets and handouts for mentees, as well as a space for mentees to respond to journal prompts; and
IV) the Program Management Handbook which is a collection of resources for program managers to support the implementation of the AGYW mentoring program.

YouthPower Action introduced this program in both Uganda and Burundi in 2017 and is continuing to expand.

Watch the video describing a pilot of the approach in Uganda: