1. World Bank, Great Lakes Emergency Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Women’s Health Project
The Great Lakes Emergency Sexual and Gender Based Violence and Women’s Health project is a World Bank regional project that will support the governments of Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to address and prevent SGBV in the Great Lakes region. The development objective of this impact evaluation in DRC is to further understand how to respond most effectively to survivors of SGBV and how to contribute to violence prevention in the three countries (Rwanda, Burundi and DRC) by transforming norms and behaviors regarding SGBV and gender equality. The three studies will focus on the impact of the holistic support for SGBV survivors and violence prevention sub-components including evaluating the impact of narrative exposure therapy (NET) on the mental health and socioeconomic empowerment of survivors of sexual violence in Eastern DRC.
2. World Bank, Kenya Household Joint Accounts and Survivor Ownership Rights
Household bank accounts in Kenya are, in most cases, individually registered and held by the male head of household. Individual owners enjoy total privacy and control of their bank accounts. When the individual owner passes on, many such accounts and their balances go unclaimed. Surviving widows are difficult to identify and, once reached, must go through a costly, complex, and lengthy court process to claim the assets.
This impact evaluation project will collaborate with a for-profit financial institution to encourage male individual account holders to take up a new form of joint account, wherein the co-owner has limited rights until the death of the primary owner, but has immediate unrestricted access to the account in the event of the primary owner’s passing. The study will test the impacts of varying the levels of account privacy and control on the take-up of joint accounts, account balances, intra-household decision-making and management of household’s finances. The study will also seek to capture impacts on the financial well-being of the surviving spouses of account owners who pass on during the study period.
3. World Bank, South Africa Youth Job Search Assistance:
This evaluation will assess the effectiveness of an innovative intervention aimed to address gender disparities in the labor market outcomes of young new entrants. The intervention is expected to have important impacts for young new work-seekers, who lack job experience and references from prior employment. On the demand side, access to information on job-seekers’ skills may be particularly valuable for women applicants and business owners, who can rely less on networks and referrals either to signal their skills or to identify productive workers. On the supply side, the intervention may have larger impacts on women job-seekers who tend to be less confident than men with the same level of skills.
4. World Bank, South Africa Skill Certification and Counseling:
This project aims to assess the effectiveness of a skill certification and job-search counseling program addressing gender disparities in the labor market outcomes of unemployed young adults. As part of the South Africa Department of Labor’s employment services, work-seekers will be offered a certificate of aptitude, a letter of recommendation template, and advice on how to prepare and submit job applications. The evaluation will help to discern the appropriate framing (credibility and content) of test certificates and job references, as well as identifying the type of information signal that employers find more valuable. The certification and counseling interventions are potentially more valuable for women, as they have more limited job networks, and thus find more challenging to directly signal their skills to prospective employers in a credible and relevant manner.
5. World Bank and International Rescue Committee, Democratic Republic of Congo, Learning from a Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Pilot
Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP) intervention is a program developed and implemented by the IRC to engage men to reflect on how they can reduce and prevent intimate partner violence through 16 weekly group discussion sessions. The discussions explore existing understandings of masculinity and create more positive models of what it means to be a ‘good’ man, promoting self-reflection and pushing men to analyze and change their own power and privilege.