Data plays a well-established role in fighting poverty, providing valuable insight into people’s lives in the world’s poorest countries. But traditional research methods have tended to overlook girls’ experiences, creating a gender data gap that leaves girls behind.

In a new interview with Jennifer Ehidiamen for Devex, Laura Scanlon, director of TEGA (Technology Enabled Girl Ambassadors) explains how TEGA fills the gap:

“Three years ago, we set about overcoming this problem and designing a solution that not only enabled us get an accurate understanding of a girl’s life but also use evolution in technology to allow us much faster access to this understanding.”

TEGA’s groundbreaking approach involves training girls to collect data in their own communities, and report it in a range of multimedia formats.

“What it enables is for the people that are designing solutions — the program creators sitting in the headquarters of international NGOs — to finally see the faces and hear the voices of the people they need to understand,” Laura says.

Read the full interview here, and learn more about TEGA here.