Safe spaces

In contexts of extreme poverty, school closures not only mean missing out on precious learning opportunities during a critical stage of life, but also a lot of free time, which often ends up spent in unsafe places.

When Ebola struck Sierra Leone in 2014, schools were closed for over a year. For millions of students, their only opportunity for protection and growth was abruptly interrupted. But those who paid the highest price were adolescent girls. Without the "coverage" of school hours, many of them found themselves exposed to early and often forced relationships with adult men, with dramatic consequences: a sharp increase in out-of-wedlock pregnancies and, consequently, school dropouts.

A group of economists closely followed these events, assessing the impact of a project promoted by BRAC, a large international NGO. The program aimed to create "safe spaces" for girls aged 12 to 18: actual girls' clubs open in the afternoon, away from the gaze (and control) of men. Here, young women could meet, participate in health education courses, receive vocational training, and, above all, have a safe place to spend time.

Researchers collected data in 200 villages, half of which were exposed to this girls' club program and half were not.
The results, published in a prestigious American business journal, tell a sad story and a happy one. In villages without safe spaces, teenage pregnancies rose from 13% to 21% during the epidemic: nearly one in five girls had a child before the age of 18. Many never returned to school: the enrollment rate dropped from 70% to 58% in two years. For those who became pregnant, the school door was effectively closed: only 3% managed to return to school.
In the villages where the project was implemented, however, the story was different. The presence of a safe space reduced out-of-wedlock pregnancies by almost a quarter and, in the highest-risk areas, completely offset the increase observed elsewhere. It's not hard to imagine why: girls who attended the clubs actually spent more time with their peers and less time with adult men, thus eliminating many risky situations at the source. Consequently, the likelihood of returning to school after reopening increased significantly, especially in the most vulnerable contexts.

According to the authors, the protective effect stemmed primarily from the availability of a shared physical space, rather than from the individual training courses or additional economic activities envisaged by the project. In "normal" times, programs like this produce benefits through the transfer of skills and the creation of job opportunities; but in times of crisis, such as during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, the primary value seems to have been the concrete, daily possibility of having a safe place to grow up away from violence.

Beyond its scientific and academic significance, this study has enormous political implications, particularly for public and private interventions in times of crisis for the most at-risk groups. Crises—epidemics, wars, natural disasters—affect people unequally at different levels. Those who are most vulnerable, like, in this case, adolescent girls, risk losing not only months of school, but entire life trajectories, carrying with them traumas that are difficult to overcome, when and if they have the chance. Early pregnancy, in these contexts, often means the end of education, forced marriage, economic dependence, and exclusion, fueling already deeply rooted gender inequalities.

It takes very little to reverse the trend: a community space, an open room in the village, a peer support network. A low-cost intervention that can break the chain that fuels the spiral of poverty, defending the freedom to choose one's own future, to stay in school, and to invest in one's own abilities.

Pierluigi Conzo
NP October 2025