The Passages Project

Situation or Background
Enabling young women and men to live gender-equitable lives free of violence, coerced sex, and unintended pregnancy is a critical global challenge. Social norms affect young people’s access to the education, services, and information they need to protect their health. Research shows that investing in social norms change while ensuring supportive policies and access to high-quality services can bring about significant improvements in reproductive health and well-being.

Our Goal or What We’re Doing
The Passages Project, a USAID-funded, seven-year implementation research project led by the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University, sought to address a broad range of social norms, at scale, to achieve sustained improvements in voluntary family planning, reproductive health, and gender-based violence.

Approach or Methodology
The Passages Project aimed to strengthen normative environments that support reproductive health, especially among young people at life course transition points, including very young adolescents, newly married youth, and first-time parents. Passages capitalized on formative periods of transition to test, study, and scale a suite of interventions in Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Nepal, Niger, and Senegal. These interventions promoted collective change through media, advocacy, and community campaigns and mobilization, as well as discussions within social networks and among community leaders.

Impact and What We’re Learning
The project contributed to the evidence base and the capacity of the global community to strengthen normative environments that support reproductive health. Passages distilled and
packaged its work to help global health and development practitioners, researchers, and evaluators design, implement, and measure norms-shifting approaches. The project contributed
evidence, tools, and resources to promote better understanding, implementation, evaluation, and scale-up of normative approaches.

Resources
Explore our legacy contributions here: The Passages Project with IRH