Girl Effect is a not-for-profit organisation that exists to change the way people think, feel and act towards millions of girls across the developing world. It does this by tackling the negative social norms that hold girls and their communities back.

To deliver Girl Effect’s mission, and help hundreds of like-minded NGOs, charities and businesses to unlock change, there needs to be a much better understanding of a girl’s reality, what resonates with her, and the unique battleground that is her life.

However, traditional research methodologies are not geared towards ensuring the voices of those in the hardest to reach communities in the world are authentically heard. Not only is research inconsistent, slow and expensive but girls are understandably cautious of uninvited and intimidating strangers asking intimate questions about their lives.

Without accurate data, understanding girls and those around them is near-on impossible.

This is a global predicament faced by NGOs, governments and, increasingly, the private sector seeking to understand hard to reach communities.

If we manage to fill this data gap, we will be able to accurately understand a girl’s world, what she needs and therefore empower her, and those around her, to help her reach her full potential.

Working alongside the Market Research Society (MRS) we designed a bespoke, peer-to-peer research qualification

Girls undertake a three-month training programme through a bespoke mobile phone to become certified qualitative and quantitative digital interviewers.

The device has a low value aesthetic, long battery life, and a visual language that enables girls to conduct credible research, even with low literacy – emojis, for example, are used to express emotions about complex themes.

Through a specially developed app, the girl researchers send the findings back to a content hub and is analysed within 15 minutes.

The app includes an alert button - so if a TEGA is in trouble, we are able to get someone to her three-times faster than the average London ambulance responds to an emergency.

Instead of a 100-page document conventional research reports compile, we present the findings as films - captivating and motivating those who can make change happen.

TEGAs have conducted 62 projects for partners including Oxfam, Mercy Corps and Facebook, and 4,000 voices have been heard to date. The project, which originally started in Northern Nigeria, is now being scaled across the whole of Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi and India.

The Content Hub now houses 80,000 individual pieces of data on Northern Nigerian girls and their communities and has already proven its ability to inform development interventions. Before our research, it was believed education and jobs were the biggest issues facing young people, but we revealed, for the first time, that drug abuse was a significant challenge. This insight influenced DFID’s £1 billion national strategy for Nigeria.

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) recognised TEGA as a ‘the shining example’ of Lean Research methodologies and, this year, the Market Research Society awarded TEGA the Best Innovation Award.

Girl Effect has seen a remarkable impact on the girls themselves:

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