This brief forms part of a series that documents emerging learning from the Adaptive approaches to reducing teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone action research project. It focuses on the three partner organisations’ learning and adaptation through the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, during the first half of 2020. Specifically, it summarises key points made by staff from the three partner organisations at a workshop that was held in July 2020 to discuss:

• how drivers of teenage pregnancy – notably norms that promote gender inequality – are affected by the Covid-19 context
• how partners have adapted their programming to the Covid-19 context
• the experience of accompanying adaptive programmes with action research during this period.

This brief captures the observations and reflections of these organisations’ staff in responding programmatically to the pandemic, rather than being an account of the impacts of Covid-19 in Sierra Leone more broadly. This forms part of our ongoing documentation of learning: what is actually going on in terms of adaptation, knowledge gaining, and what it means not to lose sight of the original goals of the programme, even in the middle of a pandemic.

Stephanie Buell and Clare Castillejo