The transformational possibilities of a peer education program to address child marriage in Nepal

ABSTRACT

Peer education has been a popular strategy in health promotion campaigns willing to reach large populations at manageable costs. The modality has been critiqued for engaging a poorly trained and cheap workforce; however, it is still broadly utilised in development programs. By focusing on qualitative data obtained from program stakeholders for the final evaluation of an intervention to address child marriage in Nepal that made use of peer educators, this article explores how properly supported peer education programs may lead to women’s empowerment, activism, and cultural change.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer education
• child marriage
• Nepal
• women’s rights
• international NGOs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Developed by Dart and Davies (2003) the MSC technique is a simple qualitative participatory tool, based on a single question, which aims at retrieving and collectively re-signifying program outcome stories.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

María Florencia Amigó

María Florencia Amigó is a social anthropologist specialised in the anthropology and sociology of childhood and youth, with a focus on developing contexts. She has worked on projects revolving around child labour, child migration, and child marriage. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Sydney, Australia.

Sandeep Gurung

Sandeep Gurung is a sociologist and development practitioner based in Nepal. He has worked on a number of projects around gender-based violence, women’s empowerment and disaster risk management for a range of NGOs. He holds a Master of Arts in Sociology from Tribhunvan University, Nepal.