Listening to Families and Communities 2: A Follow-up Study in the Power-Up Girls Program (Philippines, 2026)

This follow-up study examines early outcomes of Save the Children Philippines’ Power‑Up Girls Program (2023–2029) through a 2025 Light Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) assessment, conducted two years after the baseline across urban and rural sites in the Philippines. The study assesses changes among families engaged through PaMILyah and community actors mobilized through Kabataan Konek programs, focusing on gender equality, adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (ASRHR), child protection, and the prevention of adolescent pregnancy and child early and forced marriage.

Findings show clear early gains in knowledge across all groups, with particularly strong improvements among adolescents and organized community actors. However, overall knowledge levels among families remain below 40%, and improvements in attitudes are uneven, with several harmful gender norms, especially those related to masculinity, stigma, and responsibility for pregnancy, remaining deeply entrenched. Practice-level change lags behind knowledge and attitudes, indicating persistent barriers to action, including stigma, access constraints, and limited confidence to engage with services and advocacy.

Notably, session attendance alone does not predict stronger outcomes, highlighting the importance of facilitation quality, relevance, and reinforcement beyond formal sessions. The study underscores the need to shift from session-centric delivery toward household- and community-level diffusion models, leverage youth and civil society actors as message multipliers, and systematically integrate stigma reduction to bridge the gap between learning and action.