Introduction
WAGE (Women and Girls Empowered) was a global consortium, hereafter referred to as the Consortium, led by the American Bar Association, Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) in close partnership with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), Grameen Foundation (Grameen), and Search for Common Ground (Search). WAGE’s overarching goal was to strengthen the capacity of civil society organizations (CSO) in target countries to advance the status of women and girls in three core thematic areas: preventing and responding to gender-based violence (GBV); advancing the women, peace, and security agenda (WPS); and supporting women’s economic empowerment (WEE).
One of WAGE’s key objectives was to engage in collaborative research and learning to build a body of evidence on promising practices in advancing the status of women and girls. WAGE’s learning agenda established the priority research questions that the program actively sought to answer, which aligned with the Consortium’s and donor’s priorities. WAGE sought to understand what was already known about integrated programming for women’s and girls’ empowerment, what gaps in practice and evidence existed, and how to bridge identified gaps. All this collaborative research yielded promising practices and lessons learned that are summarized in this report on the learning agenda.