Farewell to GAGE...

Author: Shruthi Dileep

I vividly remember the day I first visited the GAGE programme. It was a rainy spring morning, and I arrived at ODI Global's old Southwark office as a drenched, slightly anxious recent graduate, with little idea of what lay ahead. Three years later, I am sitting in ODI Global's new office near the Palace of Westminster, writing a farewell note and thinking about how much has changed since that first day.

Over these three years, GAGE has shaped me in more ways than I could have anticipated. It has challenged me, taught me, and given me opportunities that have influenced both my professional development and personal growth. Looking back, I am incredibly grateful for the people I've worked with, the experiences I've had, and everything I have learned along the way.

I joined GAGE as a part-time qualitative research coder, working with transcripts from three of GAGE's focal countries: Ethiopia, Jordan and Lebanon. Having grown up in India, I had limited understanding of these contexts at the time. Yet, through reading transcripts and engaging with the reports that followed, I learnt about the uniqueness of each setting and the striking similarities across them. Despite their different social, cultural and political contexts, many young people were navigating systems that excluded them from decisions affecting their lives, even as they demonstrated remarkable agency, resilience and aspirations for the future.

What makes GAGE particularly relevant and important is its recognition that adolescents and young people are not merely passive recipients of policy and programming, but active agents in their own lives. As the largest longitudinal mixed-methods study of its kind, following more than 20,000 adolescents across diverse contexts, GAGE has not simply treated young people as research participants. Instead, they have been at the heart of the research itself, helping to shape questions, priorities and insights. The programme is grounded not in preconceived assumptions about what young people need, but in listening to them and ensuring that their experiences inform policies and programmes that affect their lives.

One of the most rewarding aspects of GAGE's research design has been its long-term engagement with adolescents and young people. Following their journeys over more than a decade means witnessing not only their challenges, but also their achievements, hopes and resilience. In a small way, being part of GAGE has meant sharing in those journeys and understanding the significance of longitudinal research in capturing social change over time.

Another aspect of GAGE that I deeply admire is its commitment to knowledge sharing. The programme makes its research outputs, whether reports, briefs or journal articles, freely accessible to all. In doing so, GAGE acts as a steward of knowledge and evidence rather than its sole custodian, helping to ensure that research can be used widely to support learning, advocacy and change.

What makes GAGE stand out as a research programme is the space it provides for early career researchers to explore and develop their own interests within the broader framework of the project. Throughout my time here, I have been fortunate to work alongside an exceptionally supportive and encouraging team. The diversity of opportunities I was given allowed me to develop skills well beyond my original role. I learned qualitative coding using MAXQDA, organised workshops, supported programme operations, managed social media platforms, explored design and communications, learnt about data management, and coordinated coding activities across multiple research contexts. More recently, I had the opportunity to contribute to background research on aid tracking in the context of shrinking government funding. This work highlighted important trends in international development financing, including the finding that while the absolute amount of aid directed towards adolescent girls has increased, its overall share of development assistance has declined over time.

One of the highlights of my time at GAGE was the opportunity to represent the programme at Women Deliver 2026 in Melbourne. Engaging with researchers, advocates, policymakers and activists from around the world was both inspiring and energising. It reinforced the importance of evidence-driven advocacy and the role that research can play in advancing gender equality and improving the lives of adolescents and young people.

Leaving GAGE is bittersweet. The programme has been an important part of my formative years and has provided experiences that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. More than anything, I am grateful to have worked with a team that has consistently been supportive, generous, and kind.

When I think about the lessons I will take from GAGE, one stands out above all: the importance of approaching research, and indeed any work, with integrity and curiosity. Those values have shaped my time here and will continue to guide me wherever I go next.

Thank you, GAGE, for the opportunities, the friendships and the memories. It has been a privilege to be part of this journey, and you will be dearly missed.