Background
CARE launched TESFA (which means “hope” in Amharic) in 2010, to mitigate the challenges faced by married adolescent girls in the South Gondar zone of the Amhara region of Ethiopia. TESFA reached 5,000 girls and worked to improve their economic empowerment and sexual and reproductive health status. TESFA combined CARE’s successful Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model within peer-led girls’ groups, and Social Analysis and Action (SAA) with adult community members to address the social and normative barriers faced by adolescents, especially married girls.
Intervention
TESFA+ was designed to scale and amplify the impact of TESFA. Borrowing from design-thinking and scaling frameworks, CARE is employing a systematic and phased approach to exploring, creating, and testing a new TESFA+ model.
During the TESFA+ design phase in 2019, CARE identified components from the original model to build from as well as new prototypes that will contribute significantly to scaling the model. In holding to design-thinking principles, CARE carried out the design process in partnership with original TESFA participants, their communities, and government stakeholders to ensure the new TESFA model works for them and takes their unique insights, needs, and priorities into account, laying the foundation for the new model’s success.
Program achievements
The original implementation of TESFA from 2010-2013 achieved: