A New Tool for Understanding Girls’ Agency is Now Available: It’s a Win for Global Advocacy and for Girls Themselves

Understanding and supporting adolescent girls’ agency has been a long-term priority for many organizations in the global development sector. It is both a common goal for girl-focused programs and an elusive outcome that can be difficult to define and challenging to measure.  

Now, a significant shift is underway. 

Since 2018, AMPLIFY Girls, Girls Agency Lab Consulting, and a coalition of African leaders from community-driven organizations have been developing the Adolescent Girls Agency Survey (AGAS)—a psychometric tool designed to allow adolescent girls to reflect and report on their own experiences. It measures how a girl’s sense of agency shifts over the course of a program, providing the kind of reliable data organizations need to serve them better. 

The tool is now available at the recently launched girlsagencyportal.org, marking a turning point in how the development sector defines, measures, and advances girls’ agency. 

A More Inclusive, Deeper Understanding 

The AGAS and its accompanying portal are transformative not only because of the design, but also the context and community that shaped their creation. 

From the outset, the development of these resources was informed by the experiences of local actors and community-driven organizations. As a result, the implications of the tools go far beyond better monitoring and evaluation. The platforms give girl-focused organizations an opportunity to build evidence-based strategies rooted in the voices of girls and local expertise—both of which are often excluded from conversations about what works, why, and for whom, at scale. 

For years, organizations grounded in underrepresented communities have collected valuable qualitative evidence about girls’ agency-building. However, the lack of rigorous, quantitative data has hindered their ability to make the investment case for girl-focused programming. The AGAS bridges this gap, offering both scientific credibility and contextualized insights. With AGAS data, organizations can now: 

• Track changes in girls’ agency over time 
• Make evidence-based program improvements 
• Demonstrate program impact 
• Share best practices across contexts 
• Secure funding for community-driven innovation 
• Advocate for policies grounded in information from girls themselves 

The cumulative effect of these opportunities is a new and notable resource in the girl-focused development sector that is uniquely rooted in deep understanding and inclusive design. 

Amplifying Local Insights in a Practical, Meaningful Manner 

Across the development sector, there are frequent calls for the “localization” of programs. However, efforts to realize this vision often stall at rhetoric. What’s been missing is a practical, scalable way to uplift local actors and translate their insights into tangible, fundable, and replicable action.   

The AGAS has the potential to change this, at least in the girl-focused programming space.  

By offering free access to the survey, the online portal becomes a living repository that compiles anonymized data on girls’ agency alongside detailed information about program design, target audiences, duration and frequency, geographic location, and more. This data paints a clearer picture of what’s working in advancing girls’ agency and the community-based actors that are driving that success. As a result, local leaders’ insights are no longer anecdotal—they are visible, validated, and highlight best practices.

Girls’ Experiences, Reported by Girls  

For too long, data about adolescent girls’ lives has been filtered through adult assumptions and observations—focusing programming on girls but rarely with their direct input. There is growing momentum in the advocacy landscape to center girls’ voices in shaping strategies and holding systems accountable. However, doing so meaningfully—without resorting to tokenism or burdening girls with the task of fixing systemic barriers they face—remains a challenge.   

The AGAS offers a practical solution. It treats girls as experts in their own lives, capturing their self-reported experiences to measure real shifts in agency and inform program strategies. This isn’t just about collecting more data. It’s about collecting the right data and using it to redefine how we know what works. It allows us, across the sector, to reenvision success through the lens of those most affected. 

By transforming girls’ lived experiences into actionable evidence, AGAS equips advocates to create more credible messages that influence policy, funding, and accountability. It replaces assumptions with firsthand insights, enabling advocacy that reflects what girls truly need to determine their future. 

With the AGAS and girlsagencyportal.org, girls lead the narrative. Their experiences help organizations and other duty-bearers evaluate whether they are actually creating the conditions for girls to thrive. When we listen to girls, elevate their insights, and act on evidence, we build more effective, inclusive, and accountable systems of change.