EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The World Bank is supporting the Federal Government of Nigeria to implement the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) to reduce gender gap in secondary education attendance and completion rates and labour market transition among adolescent girls. The proposed Project Development Objective (PDO) is to Improve secondary education opportunities among girls in targeted areas in participating states. Specific objective of this SEP is to establish a systematic approach to stakeholder engagement at project level that will identify stakeholders and build/ maintain a constructive relationship with them to enable stakeholders’ views to be considered in project design and environmental and social performance.

Applicable National Legal Provisions and Regulations for Environmental and Social Safeguards and Citizen Engagement include: Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999) as amended; The Freedom of Information Act (2011); Nigerian Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act Cap E12, LFN 2004; The Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Act, Cap N138, 2004.

Applicable World Bank Policies include: World Bank Environmental and Social Framework; A Vision for Sustainable Development; The World Bank Environmental and Social Policy for Investment Project Financing; The Environmental and Social Standards.

The level of success and sustainability of the AGILE project is crucial and dependent upon proper Stakeholder Engagement and its associated activities taking place. The AGILE project seeks to improve secondary education opportunities among girls by constructing new schools and refurbishing existing dilapitaed existing learning conditions. It further seeks to provide cash-based scholarships to improve girls transition to and attendance of secondary school, provide life-skills and digital training, as well as engage in behavioural campaigns that seek to address social norms that have enabled negative attitudes and behaviours towards girl’s education and empowerment.

Given the above objectives, the process will be important in:

• ascertaing key project risks as the communities see them;
• developing preventive and mitigtation measures to address risks;
• ensuring concerns of communities are acknowledged and addressed;
• informing targeting mechanisms for the identification of schools as well as for recipients of financial packages (special care will be given to ensuring that vulnerable groups are included in the dialogue notably students with disabilities and their parents/gurdians, displaced girls, GBV survivors, among others)
• helping to identify the best monitoring mechanisms for activities;
• seeking inputs from stakeholders on how to develop an adaptive behavioral campaign that addresses differentiated concerns in communities, and the likely varied adoption rates of social norms that support girls education and their empowerment (notably, norms associated with child marriage, exclusionary education, SGBV and school-based violence (e.g. corporal punishment);
• strenghthening the projects ‘safe school’ approach