More Than Brides Alliance: Endline evaluation report More Than Brides Alliance: Endline evaluation report

Objectives

The evaluation aimed to assess the impact of the More Than Brides Alliance “Marriage: No Child’s Play” programme on child marriage, schooling, livelihoods, SRHR knowledge and gender attitudes in India, Malawi, Mali and Niger after more than four years of implementation. It also sought to document how the Covid-19 pandemic and related disruptions affected adolescent girls’ wellbeing, education and pathways to marriage in programme and comparison areas.

Findings

Child marriage declined in all four countries, but a clear programme effect on marriage was seen only in India, where the proportion of girls married in intervention areas fell from 14.5% to 4.5%, a much larger drop than in comparison areas. In Malawi, Mali and Niger, marriage also declined but at similar rates in intervention and comparison sites, so impact cannot be attributed to the programme.

Across countries the intervention improved girls’ knowledge of the legal age at marriage and of the negative effects of child marriage, with consistent gains in India, Malawi and Niger, and showed some positive effects on schooling, literacy, work and club participation, although patterns were uneven. Covid-19 and related restrictions worsened household food insecurity and finances, increased girls’ depression and care burdens, and disrupted education, reinforcing known drivers of early marriage even where programme gains were visible.

Recommendations

Programmes to prevent child marriage should continue to use multi-level approaches but ensure strong, well-defined components that can demonstrate impact on marriage, education and livelihoods in diverse contexts. Future efforts need tighter implementation fidelity, clearer comparison groups and evaluation designs that can detect change even where national trends are already improving. Donors and implementers should invest in strategies that build girls’ social assets, sustain school participation, expand safe economic options and protect SRHR, while also addressing crisis shocks such as Covid-19 that threaten to reverse progress, and should integrate routine monitoring of both programme exposure and contextual risks into large-scale initiatives.