Livelihoods
AIM 2026: young women’s livelihood pathways
Research and learning partner to BRAC International on a qualitative study of how young women in the Accelerating Impact for Young Women (AIM) programme build their livelihoods.
BRAC International’s Accelerating Impact for Young Women (AIM) programme gives adolescent girls and young women in Sierra Leone entrepreneurship, employability and life-skills training, and the tools to start and grow a business. IfD is again its research and learning partner in Sierra Leone, this time for a qualitative study of the pathways young women take into livelihoods.
It builds on IfD’s earlier work with AIM: a study of participants’ journeys with the programme’s first cohort in 2024, a qualitative study of its third cohort in 2025, and research on young women’s move into microfinance. See Accelerating Impact for Young Women (AIM).
The study is designed around the lessons of those rounds. Interviewers are certified through role-played interviews before they go to the field. Supervisors check that every respondent meets the study’s criteria before and after each interview, and early recordings are reviewed while the teams are still in the field. Interviews are transcribed during fieldwork and checked against BRAC’s protocols before they are submitted.