MITIGATING VULNERABILITY OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS VIA INNOVATIVE USAGE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES: INSIGHTS FROM A FIELD TRIAL

Adolescents and young adults, between the ages of 10 to 24, comprise approximately 30 percent of India’s population. These youths, 365 million strong, will shape the future of the nation. Although the Government of India has been spending enormous amount of money in a relentless manner over decades and the current cohorts of youth are healthier and better educated than ever before, the fact of the matter is, vulnerabilities still persist for adolescent girls (World Bank, 2014). We argue in this paper that vulnerability of adolescent girls cannot be dealt with by executing verticals programs in Education, Health, Nutrition and Protection in isolation rather it needs to be handled by running these programs in a converged manner. The comprehensive reports and analysis of data across these domains would provide a 360-degree view of individual girls, predicting their potential vulnerability well ahead of time, thereby enabling the stakeholders to intervene and prevent untoward incidents like child marriage, child labor, child pregnancy, and trafficking among others. Furthermore, insights generated from analyzing the data from the field can be used to identify the areas of improvement for the program as applicable to decision makers at different levels of societal structure starting with villages to blocks to districts. This paper describes a digital solution called G-Power that comprehensively addresses the above challenges, and shares insights from a field trial carried out in two districts of West Bengal in India.