Agency for All is a five (5) years USAID-funded project (2022-2027) that operates globally in Africa and Asia. Its aim is to generate and apply evidence on agency, empowerment, and effective social and behavior change (SBC) programs. The project’s goal is to improve and sustain health and agency for women, girls and communities through locally led, equitable partnerships focused on understanding agency and its role in converting intentions into action within SBC programs. Although there is emerging evidence that empowerment-focused SBC interventions can create sustained impacts on a wide range of health outcomes across contexts, SBC interventions rarely address issues of individual, collective and organizational empowerment and agency.

To address this gap in SBC programming, the Agency for All project consortium is developing culturally and locally relevant constructs of agency, strengthening evidence on approaches to increase agency for sustained health and well-being, and fostering the agency of local partners to generate and utilize evidence.

The Agency for All project consortium is led by the Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH) at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), in collaboration with a diverse and highly experienced consortium of global, regional, and country leaders in both implementation and research, including EVIHDAF and many others (Centre for Catalyzing Change, CORE Group, Equimundo, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Makerere University, Matchboxology, Sambodhi, Save the Children, Shujaaz Inc., University of Witswatersrand, and Viamo). This consortium works with the Social Norms & Agency Learning Collaboratives (SNALC) in East Africa, West Africa and South Asia to foster local leadership, promote positive social norms and enhancing individual and community agency to improve health. EVIHDAF, through local partnerships, covers West and Central Africa.