PUBLISHED RESEARCH
“Empowerment—Fulfilled, Free, and Strong”: Conceptualizing Youth Empowerment in Madagascar Using an Arts-Based Methodology
This study, published in Health Promotion Practice, shares results from our participatory research on what youth empowerment means in the Malagasy context, using the Visual Voices methodology.
March 2026
The Starting Point
Youth empowerment is a common goal in global and community development, but what we mean by empowerment can be unclear and differ across cultures. In Madagascar, no one had yet worked to define what it actually means to young Malagasy people. Without a locally grounded definition, programs risk missing what empowerment really looks like for the youth they're meant to serve.
In Brief
This peer-reviewed study, published in Health Promotion Practice, used an arts-based research method called Visual Voices to explore how youth empowerment is understood in Madagascar. Eighteen PJL educators took part in a creative workshop — painting, drawing, and writing — to express and define empowerment in their own words and images, culminating in one collective art piece.
Key Takeaways
→ Visual Voices — a participatory, arts-based method — successfully surfaced complex, deeply personal ideas about empowerment that might be harder to capture through traditional interviews alone.
→ Participants identified seven core elements of youth empowerment: freedom, strength, goals, steps to reach goals, education, development, and community support.
→ Gender, outlook, and success surfaced as important cross-cutting themes shaping how empowerment plays out in practice.
Discover Other Resources
From Classroom to Community: A Study of the Multi-Level Impacts of a Comprehensive Sexuality Education School Subject in Madagascar through Collaborative Filmmaking
Through Collaborative Filmmaking, a participatory visual research methodology, CSE teachers in Madagascar's rural public middle schools documented how the subject can positively transform a school community
“When I finished my film, I realized that people really needed me there”: the transformative power of Collaborative Filmmaking
A qualitative study, published in Springer Nature's Research Involvement and Engagement, examining how the process of Collaborative Filmmaking shaped CSE educators’ motivation, self-reflection, and use of film as an advocacy tool.
There’s the ocean. So, this ocean is like life. You’re going through life, you have to go up against the waves . . . even in life, you have to go through challenges . . . this is what I consider empowerment, because we’ve gone through all these different waves of the ocean in your community, your life, and the challenges.
Participant
