No images? Click here
January 2026
GAGE Newsletter - Welcome 2026!
Welcome back to the GAGE newsletter and welcome to 2026!
In this edition, we reflect on GAGE’s activities during the final months of 2025, highlighting ongoing data collection, key events, and open-access publications. As we look ahead to 2026, we remain hopeful for a safer and more equitable world for adolescents and young people globally. On our part, we are actively consolidating our extensive longitudinal evidence into a cohesive GAGE 2026 Endline Campaign. This will pool together cross-country findings, thematic highlights, and evaluation insights, all firmly grounded in the lived realities and voices of young people. Stay tuned for all updates as GAGE enters its final stretch!
We are also pleased to hear from GAGE research participant-turned-participatory researcher Sana Othman, who reflects on the close of 2025 and shares her hopes and excitement for the year ahead:
My journey with GAGE began as a young participant who was hesitant to speak and unsure that my voice mattered. Over time, through GAGE’s participatory approach, I grew into a young researcher who learned that lived experience is not only valid, but essential to meaningful research. In 2025, contributing to GAGE’s participatory research stream in Lebanon and being involved in the GAGE/AGIP launch of the Participatory Research (PAR) Toolkit was a powerful milestone for me. It reflected everything GAGE stands for—creating safe, inclusive spaces where adolescents are trusted not just to participate, but to lead, question, and co-create knowledge that reflects real lives and real challenges.
As we move into 2026, I am especially looking forward to GAGE’s Endline Campaign and the opportunity it presents to further center young people’s voices in research, learning, and advocacy. My hope is that GAGE and the adolescent girl ecosystem continues to strengthen and expand participatory spaces, ensuring that more adolescents can move from being listened to, to shaping the decisions that affect their lives. I am committed to carrying this work forward by advocating for youth-led research and supporting young people to build confidence, agency, and leadership through meaningful participation. My own journey is a reminder that when young people are given trust, tools, and opportunity, they don’t just find their voices—they use them to create change.
We hope you enjoy this edition!
Best wishes,
GAGE programme team
Photo caption and credit: A 17-year-old girl in Jordan who does not attend school © Marcel /GAGE 2025
Research Updates
As GAGE research streams in Jordan, Lebanon and Ethiopia entered endline dissemination phases in the final quarter of 2025, GAGE teams in Bangladesh and Gaza launched final endline data collection exercises.
In November 2025, GAGE Jordan launched its endline research engagements in multiple locations across the country, convening partners and policymakers to share new evidence on empowering adolescents and young people. The week featured a series of events, beginning with the Inclusive Education and Intersecting Capabilities workshop at the Queen Rania Centre for Education Technology. This session presented new findings on the barriers faced by adolescents and young people with disabilities across education, skills development, and wellbeing. Later in the week, the Young People’s Economic Empowerment roundtable, hosted at the Economic and Social Council of Jordan, examined challenges faced by Syrian, Jordanian, and Palestinian youth in accessing social protection, financial services, and decent work, as well as
pathways to strengthen inclusion and resilience. The engagements concluded at the Kempinski Hotel Ishtar at the Dead Sea, where GAGE shared further evidence on strengthening education and economic empowerment outcomes for adolescents and young people with stakeholders from the Ministries of Education, Labour, Health, the National Council for Family Affairs and UNICEF.
Click below to see the most recent endline publications from Jordan.
In December 2025, GAGE Ethiopia brought together partners, policymakers, practitioners, and young people in Ethiopia for a two-day event reflecting on a decade of research across the country. The discussions were opened by the State Minister from the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs, who emphasised the importance of a life-course approach and the critical role of Ethiopia’s youth in shaping future progress. The event included two youth-led panels, featuring eight young people who have participated in GAGE research since 2017 and joined from Amhara, Oromia, Dire Dawa, and Afar. Participants engaged with evidence across key domains, including education, economic empowerment, protection from violence (including child marriage and FGM), health and sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial wellbeing, and young people’s voice and agency.
Click below to see the most recent endline publications from Ethiopia.
Endline data collection was launched in December 2025 in Bangladesh and Gaza. In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, GAGE has partnered with Girl Rising and UNICEF Bangladesh to evaluate the Girl Rising intervention which leverages the power of storytelling as a transformational tool with the power to build understanding and empathy, to introduce complex topics and spark discovery. In the Rohingya context, stories are engaging and powerful and explore issues around rights, equity, and the value of girls' education. Mixed-methods endline data collection with Rohingya adolescent girls was launched in December 2025.
In Gaza, GAGE teams were trained for endline qualitative research launched in December 2025 with adolescents and young people in crisis. The data collection underway also includes a new qualitative tool that will allow participants’ the freedom in telling their own strories on surviving the past two years. Photos from the qualitative training in Gaza below:
Snapshot of GAGE events and multimedia
In November 2025, GAGE’s Cox’s Bazar Qualitative Research Lead, Dr Khadija Mitu, was featured in the latest episode of the Sexual Violence and Research Initiative (SVRI) podcast. Titled Understanding IPV Over Time: The Power of Longitudinal Research, the episode explores how long-term, evidence-based research can deepen understanding of intimate partner violence, including drivers and how experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV) shift across the life course. In conversation with SVRI and Equimundo, Dr Khadija discussed why longitudinal research is critical for prevention efforts, the challenges of conducting such research, and how findings can inform policies and programmes with lasting impact.
The fourth quarter of 2025 was also marked by a busy programme of global events and external engagements. In October, GAGE research was featured at several key fora, including the National Conference on What Works in Girls’ Education in Kampala, the MENA Region Adolescents Health Conference in Tunis, and the 4th Ethiopia Gender and Education Resource (EGER) Conference in Addis Ababa.
In November, GAGE participated in the Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD), held in Doha. Together with partners from Malala Fund, Plan International, the Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (AGIP), and the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), GAGE co-hosted the joint event Resourcing adolescent girls: sustainable solutions towards financing girls’ rights. The session centred girls’ rights, voices, and lived experiences, underscoring the importance of ensuring that global financing solutions are shaped by—and responsive to—the realities of adolescent girls, particularly those facing multiple and intersecting disadvantages.
In November, GAGE also participated in the Seventh International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP 2025), which convened global leaders, advocates, and researchers working on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The conference provided a platform to share evidence, foster collaboration, and advance progress towards equitable outcomes for all. The 2025 theme, Equity Through Action: Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All, emphasised the need to translate commitments into meaningful and measurable impact.
At the end of November, GAGE launched the new Participatory research with young people: a toolkit, developed in partnership with the Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (AGIP) and co-created with adolescent girls, young researchers, and partners from around the world. Grounded in feminist participatory research principles, the toolkit goes beyond a traditional guide, offering practical support for organisations committed to co-creating knowledge with adolescent girls. It focuses on:
· How to design participatory research that is empowering and inclusive
· What good practice looks like, illustrated through real-world examples
Finally, from 25 November to 10 December, GAGE aligned with the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. As part of an online campaign, GAGE shared key research aligned with this year’s theme, End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls.
Recent publications
Finally, we highlight a selection of our most recent journal articles and the most recent endline qualitative toolkit, with a strong focus on adolescent capabilities in humanitarian contexts:
Presler-Marshall, E., Jones, N., Baird, S., Alheiwidi, S. and Oakley, E. ‘Child marriage in contexts of forced displacement: exploring drivers and decision-making in Jordan through a gender and generational lens.’ Frontiers in Sociology, 10, 1599991
- Abu Hamad, B., Vintges, J., Jones, N. and Abualghaib, O. (2025) ‘Views on the upcoming Lancet Commission on disability and health’. The Lancet 406(10519), 2537–2538
- Pincock, K., Jones, N. and Al Heiwidi, S. (2025). ‘"My view of the world and my place in it has been shaken": shifting political identities among young refugees in Jordan since 7 October 2023' Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: 1-18
- Jones, N., Presler-Marshall, E., Alabbadi, T., Al-Amaireh, W., Alheiwidi, S., Alshareef, Q. and Harrison, M. (2025) GAGE endline qualitative research tools: Jordan. Tools. London: Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence
