Life Skills and Livelihoods for Young Women: A Cluster RCT of BRAC's AIM Program in Tanzania

Young women in Sub-Saharan Africa face multiple barriers that constrain economic participation: limited assets and skills, low self-confidence, and restrictive gender norms. Can soft-skills enhance the effects of a livelihood program for young women? And do perceived social norms themselves act as a binding constraint on women's economic engagement? We are conducting a cluster-randomized controlled trial across 150 wards in Tanzania, partnering with BRAC's Accelerating Impact for Young Women (AIM) program. Wards are randomly assigned to: (i) the full AIM program, which combines livelihood support with weekly girls' clubs delivering soft-skills; (ii) a livelihoods-only arm that provides training and support to start and scale businesses but excludes the club component; or (iii) comparison. The sample includes approximately 3,000 out-of-school young women aged 15-24 from economically disadvantaged households. This design isolates the causal effect of soft-skills beyond livelihoods on young women's economic and social outcomes and on ward-wide shifts in gender norms. A cross-randomized information treatment will test whether correcting misperceptions about local gender norms amplifies effects. BRAC operates AIM across multiple countries and is designing subsequent cohorts now, providing a direct pathway for findings to shape programming at the national and regional scale.