Research. Run. Evaluate. Repeat. At Breakthrough, we are committed to building an ever-growing body of evidence to strengthen our programmes, accelerate norm change and reduce gender-based violence.

External agencies conduct concurrent evaluations of our Adolescent Empowerment Programme running across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Jharkhand. The findings inform and strengthen our work in communities.

Research and evaluation also helps us ascertain the best models for scaling up our work in schools across the states of Punjab and Odisha. It ascertains the effectiveness of the intervention and helps us test ways to improve teacher effectiveness and motivation as these are crucial to our success.

Breakthrough is known for it pathbreaking thematic studies on issues like bystander intervention and its impact on gender-based violence, the influence of pop culture on gender norms, the effectiveness of gender equity curricula for adolescent girls in marginalised communities and the analysis of technology-facilitated  gender based violence.

We share evidence and learnings from our multifarious work at our annual event, Reframe: Data for Dialogue on Shifting Gender Norms. The event is a platform for broader discussions around best strategies, practices and policies to effectively address gender-based discrimination and violence.

The numbers speak of change:

• An increase in girls’ age at marriage by nearly 2 years (1 year 11 months)
• 17% increase in the number of girls aged 15 – 18 years accessing health services
• 6% decrease in the number of adolescent school dropouts (during Covid, overall increase would be more in a normal year)
• 19.4% increase in mobility of girls for things like going to the market or visiting a friend
• 17.6% increase in intergenerational dialogue between girls and parents

* External evaluation by NRMC in 7 districts of Uttar Pradesh – Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Ghazipur, Maharajganj, Siddharthnagar, Varanasi and Gosaiganj

• Significant shifts in gender attitudes of boys and girls after 2.5 years of exposure to Taaron Ki Toli curriculum
• Attitudes persist 5 years after baseline: roughly 16% of adolescents converted from gender regressive thinking to more equitable attitudes

*RCT by JPAL in Haryana