The final days of the ASEP teachers' workshop belonged to the participants: one by one, teachers and education experts stood before the room to present their own findings — what the data showed, where teaching was falling short, and what support young mothers need most. Those presentations are not just training exercises; they are the raw material of advocacy.
YAPO's policy influence strategy rests on evidence-based advocacy, and ASEP is among its strongest evidence. More than 60 teenage mothers have returned to school through the pathway, and 13 have passed national examinations — proof that exclusion of young mothers from education is a choice, not a necessity.
Evidence That Speaks to Policy
That proof matters because the policy environment still lags behind the learners. Too many teenage mothers in Tanzania face permanent exclusion from school, and re-entry commitments remain unevenly implemented across districts and regions. ASEP's results — from district classrooms through regional and national examination benchmarks — give policymakers a working model to point to.
YAPO carries this evidence into dialogue with government institutions, civil society and communities, pairing classroom data with policy dialogues and media campaigns so that the voices of youth, women and children are reflected in Tanzania's development agenda.
A Broader Gender Equality Agenda
The push for re-entry sits inside a wider commitment to gender equality. Through the Digital Inclusion for Gender Equality project, YAPO trained 500 young women and girls in ICT, financial management and leadership in Lindi Region — and developed a Gender Equality Policy that now guides the organization's work as a long-term accountability tool.
The same advocacy muscle drives YAPO's civic work: through My Vote – My Future Tanzania, youth and women champions reached more than 100,000 citizens with voter education ahead of the General Elections. From classrooms to policy tables, the method is the same — gather the evidence, amplify the voices, and keep the door open until the system changes.
