Innovations for Poverty Action | Training Local Leaders to Prevent and Reduce Gender-Based Violence in Their Communities: Impact Evaluation of Leaders in Action (LIA)
Project Summary:
Gender-based violence (GBV) against women poses a significant challenge for policy makers and researchers. Despite affecting 1 out of 3 women in the world, to date there has been little rigorous research on the efficacy of interventions that aim to reduce and prevent GBV; as a result, policy-making has been guided by a "best-practice" manual and little robust evidence. The main goals of this project are to bring new and rigorous evidence by experimentally evaluating the impacts of an innovative, state-run GBV intervention, measure its cost-effectiveness, and guide the public sector’s programming in an evidence-based manner. In close partnership with the Peruvian Ministry of Women (MoW), the project will conduct a large randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the impacts of Leaders in Action (LIA).
LIA is a recently redesigned flagship program of the MoW that incorporates important lessons from GBV literature to promote changes in a cost-effective manner by training local leaders to become Community Health Volunteers (CHV) and to work with their communities at various levels. The research design aims to make progress on the scientific understanding of GBV and address the most pressing methodological concerns of previous studies, including features to uncover reporting biases and a large sample of 288 villages (randomization units).
