Young women in vulnerable situations such as teenage mothers and mothers-to-be are more likely to leave education early and face barriers to engage in work. In the absence of adequate conditions, including access to public services, healthcare and social support systems, teenage pregnancies and young motherhood can have considerable negative implications for girls. Measures tailored to the needs of this group can help mitigate the negative socio-economic impacts of teen pregnancies and young motherhood.
Building Opportunities – Costa Rica
Abstract
From 1999 to 2006 in Costa Rica, the programme Building Opportunities (Construyendo Oportunidades) provided comprehensive care to teenage mothers and mothers-to-be, as well as mothers in poverty and teenage girls at “social risk”. The programme covered both urban and rural areas across all ten regions of Costa Rica, prioritising areas with high levels of poverty and high incidences of teenage pregnancies.
Building Opportunities aimed to empower these girls and improve their quality of life through a “holistic care model” including several interventions: a six‑month capacity building programme for personal and social development; support for vocational training or continued education to facilitate insertion in the labour market; improved access to public services such as health, education, community housing and social services; and the dissemination and promotion of women, mothers and children’s rights amongst the target population. In parallel, institutional measures were taken to facilitate the rollout of this cross-sectoral care model on the ground, such as capacity-building and awareness-raising on care for teenage mothers and mothers-to-be among staff in relevant institutions (e.g. schools, health centres and social services, as well as national programme leads such as the National Women’s Institute and the Mixed Institute of Social Assistance), and institutional co‑ordination mechanisms at central and local government levels to facilitate care, including referrals and counter-referrals of the girls in the programme.
Since the Building Opportunities programme’s discontinuation in 2006, Costa Rica has set up several successor programmes to improve outcomes for young people, notably the Youth Entrepreneurship Incentive, the Footprint of Significative Leadership, and the Empléate modality of the National Employment Programme (PRONAE).
Between 1999 and 2006, about 3 000 to 4 000 girls between age 11 and 18 were reached annually. 30% of them were pregnant when they entered the programme, and 78% of them had children. The programme was evaluated in 2008, using government documents and appraisals; a telephone survey with open and closed questions; working sessions with institutions participating in the programme; and a focus group with programme participants from 2004. The results showed that Building Opportunities had a significant impact on the participants’ empowerment, and a moderate impact on the improvement of their quality of life, facilitating access to public services to some extent. The geographical areas prioritised by Building Opportunities (e.g. regions of Brunca and Limón) coincided with the regions of Costa Rica presenting the greatest social disadvantages according to national statistics.
Overall, young women having participated in the programme expressed a high degree of satisfaction with the programme, and the evaluation highlighted the positive institutional impact of the programme. By raising awareness, training officials, and creating space for reflection and dialogue on teenage pregnancies and motherhood, the programme changed institutional approaches to these groups, particularly in the education and training sector. The evaluation also identified inter-institutional co‑ordination and coverage (in terms of the number of young women corresponding to the targeted profile at national level) as two areas where improvements were required, to extend the scope and reach of the programme.
This practice also supports the implementation of provision IV.1 of the OECD Recommendation on Creating Better Opportunities for Young People (OECD, 2022[1]).
Further reading
[1] OECD (2022), Recommendation of the Council on Creating Better Opportunities for Young People, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0474.
[2] Valverde Cerros, O. et al. (2008), Evaluación de Políticas Nacionales de Juventud en Costa Rica, Organizacion Iberoamericana de Juventud, https://costarica.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/evaluacion-pol-juv.pdf.
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