NOVAH

STARTED: Incubation Program February-March 2024

Co-founder

CE INCUBATION GRANT: $165,000

M ONEY FUNDRAISED TO DATE (Aug 2024): $165,000

TEAM SIZE (Aug 2024): 2 FT (5 advisors)

Co-founder

Working towards a future where women are safe at home

Prevent intimate partner violence before it happens

DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERVENTION

Novah, short for No Violence at Home, is committed to preventing intimate partner violence (IPV), or domestic abuse, against women through mass media.
We design, produce, broadcast, and evaluate edutainment radio shows that merge engaging stories with educational content based on the entertainment-education approach. These programs are designed to shift societal norms and behaviors towards women, aiming for a substantial reduction in IPV and, thus, a significant increase in health and well-being.

BACKGROUND OF THE INTERVENTION

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) refers to harmful behaviors in a relationship, such as physical attacks, sexual coercion, emotional abuse, and controlling actions. Globally, one in four women has experienced IPV, with even higher rates in Africa. Recent academic studies have deemed mass-media interventions to prevent IPV very promising, and we want to be one of the first interventions to evaluate using radio rigorously.
IPV is the most common form of violence worldwide and leads to severe health issues, causing the death of 70,000 women each year. The impact of IPV is vast, with a global health burden of 8.5 million Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), which is more than the combined health impacts of war and natural disasters.
Children growing up in homes with domestic violence also suffer worse physical and mental health and are more likely to be involved in violence as adults, either as victims or perpetrators.
Economically, IPV can cost countries up to 2% of their GDP. Despite the significant harm caused by IPV, the area is significantly underfunded.

NEAR-TERM PLANS:

Over the first two years, our plan will transition from a proof of concept to a comprehensive pilot program:

We are currently traveling in Kenya and Rwanda to choose the initial country of operations. We will start by carrying out a Proof of Concept from July to December 2024. This will consist of forming partnerships, researching the local context for IPV and the media landscape, and collaborating with local and international experts to write and produce content. We will then air a short regional radio campaign targeting 100,000 listeners and evaluate the impact through mixed research methods. If readers are well-versed on the topic or know experts we should talk to, please write to us.
In 2025, we will implement a comprehensive pilot with a rigorous quantitative evaluation. We will scale our content production to affect 1 million listeners, rigorously measure our impact (the change in IPV prevalence) through a regression discontinuity design, and assess our intervention cost-effectiveness.
We aim to build a scalable, impactful model for potential replication and future expansion in subsequent years.

PREDICTED IMPACT:

With our pilot study we want to reach 1 million listeners and estimate that it will free 15,000 women from violence for one year. We will then work nationally and more globally in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the burden represents millions of DALYs. On top of this impact, we aim to generate critical evidence for others to replicate this intervention as broadly as possible.

COST-EFFECTIVENESS:

We conservatively estimate we can reach a couple experiencing IPV for less than $2, and for every $23 spent, a woman will stop experiencing violence for a year.
This mass-media approach is 6.5 times more effective than community-led IPV prevention programs currently endorsed by TheLifeYouCanSave. It leads to high cost-effectiveness, costing $70-100 to prevent the loss of a year of life, making it 8x more effective than cash transfers and comparable to GiveWell's top recommendations.

ROOM FOR MORE FUNDING IN 2023:

We have secured funding for our first year, setting the stage for initial results during our proof of concept phase. During this phase, we aim to reach 100,000 listeners and will evaluate the impact using initial qualitative and quantitative research methods.
The next stage, our complete pilot, is scheduled to begin in early 2025. We require an additional $191,000 for this phase to expand our reach to 1 million listeners. We conduct a rigorous quantitative evaluation with a regression discontinuity design, incorporating pre-post data and a control group.